On Listening

I love this. I love it not only because it's a great idea, well executed, but because it's important. On Christmas Day, right around the time of the Queen's speech, teenage Britain delivered its own message to the nation. It was the culmination of The Teens Speech project from Barnardo's, that has seen teenagers up and down the country given the opportunity to speak out on a whole range of issues that were important to them. Teenagers with something to say: "Our aim was to provide a glimpse into the future of our country through the candid, outspoken and heartfelt views of its next generation".

I got in touch with Andy, the planner at POKE who had been working with Barnado's on it for months, to ask him a bit more about it. The idea, he said, is to get people really thinking about complex issues:

"We wanted to give adult Britain a genuine reason to think about young people's futures; their mixed opportunities and challenges. The Teens' Speech reminds us that we should all care about future generations being empowered and able to live happy and successful lives. What better moment to have that conversation than during an end-of-year national address?"

I'm reading a number of people talking about digital distraction and information overload right now. There are more than enough reasons for us to give scant focus and attention to what we read, watch and hear. It's not always easy to take the time and effort to really listen. And I mean unbiased, uncritical, unpredjudiced listening.

In this post about the project Andy points at a TED talk by John Francis. On his twenty seventh birthday, Francis decided not to speak for one day. And because it helped him listen more than he had ever listened before, one day stretched into one week. And because he started learning more than he had ever learned before, one week stretched into one year. And one year stretched into seventeen years.  He's the man who chose to listen for seventeen years. The act of listening, says Andy, is not (necessarily) about the person you’re listening to. It’s about you. Listening is something we think we do, but rarely do properly. As John Francis says:

"Most of my adult life I had not been listening fully. I only listened long enough to determine whether the speaker's ideas matched my own. If they didn't, I would stop listening, and my mind would race ahead to compose an argument against what I believed the speaker's idea or position to be."

The final film of The Teens Speech is 17 minutes long. There's a shorter video redux of film, featuring a poem by Kate Tempest and photographs submitted to MySpace by friends of the project, which has just been posted on the site. But I urge you to take 17 minutes out for the longer version. It's worth a proper listen.

The Teens Speech - Official Premiere

The Teens' Speech | MySpace Video

Comments

[Andy]

Thanks very much for this post Neil.

You're right to highlight that the film is 17 minutes. That's a very long time to expect anyone to watch for. Amazingly, 90,000 have so far.

And if you want some really tough listening, try the audio files in these Barnardo's case studies:
http://www.barnardos.org.uk/turn_around/relationships.htm

I'm just glad there are people like those working for Barnardo's doing the really hard work. Visiting some of their local initiatives was very humbling.