Our Lives, Our Stories with Carl Chinn

Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Jayne Murray, artist and director of Place Prospectors, who went to Druids Heath in 2017 to run a small arts project and ended up holding the missing history of an entire Birmingham estate. A resident had kept carrier bags full of pamphlets, newsletters and posters from decades of community activity. It took Jayne months just to put it in chronological order. What emerged was a credit union set up to beat the loan sharks, a green space saved by residents, a neighbourhood action group that fought a housing transfer, and a resident's essay from the late 1970s.Jayne grew up in Lincoln and Sleaford, the daughter of a Glaswegian father and a Lincoln mother, and she was making little exhibitions out of museum postcards before she was eight. She talks about the GCSE batik practical that told her what she wanted to do with her life, the theory teacher at Derby who taught her how to look at an image, the 1995 weekend she spent teaching people the internet in a launderette with borrowed computers and a washing powder sponsor, and her conviction that art is not something you have to be good enough for.Jayne is passionate about making art accessible and social justice.Jayne Murray (artist) - https://www.instagram.com/jaynemurrayartistPlace Prospectors - https://prospectors.org.uk

Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Aftab Rahman, founder and chief executive of the Birmingham charity LegacyWM and a lifelong social activist. Aftab came to England from Sylhet aged six in 1976, one of the first few Bangladeshi families to settle here, and grew up in Lozells through the 1980s.This is a Birmingham life story that carries a wider history. Aftab talks about the myth of return and why Bangladeshi families arrived later than others, the racism and street violence of the 1980s. He remembers a father who split his years between two countries, a stepmother who raised him as her own, the time away from his mother and when he was reunited with her. He speaks of leaving school with no qualifications, the restaurant trade that was expected, the teacher who finally made him believe he was clever, and the life goal he set at 19, simply 'to help'.From the Bangladeshi Youth Forum to founding LegacyWM at his living-room table, this is a story about heritage, identity and what ordinary people can build when they follow their heart and their purpose.LegacyWM - https://legacywm.orgTrigger warning: This episode contains discussion of racism and racist violence, and references to wartime atrocities including sexual violence. Please do take care whilst listening or skip this episode if this could be distressing for you.

In this special solo episode, Carl Chinn opens up his own family history and turns it into a practical guide to tracing where you come from. He starts with the memories, a story passed down through the women of his family, from his great-grandmother, Granny Wood, to his nan, Lil Perry, to his mom Sylvie Chinn. It is the story of an Irish woman from County Kildare who married an English soldier at the Curragh, came to Worcester, and was abandoned, ending her days alone and in poverty in the workhouse.Carl then follows the paper trail to see whether the family story stands up, working through censuses, baptismal and death records, the 1939 register and the British Newspaper Archive. Along the way he shows how ordinary families surface in the record, often only when there is trouble, and how spellings shift, names change and truths that were softened over the years can finally be confirmed. He weaves in his own advice throughout: talk to the oldest members of your family, ask open questions that draw out stories, and gather every certificate, cutting and photograph you can.At its heart this is a reflection on why the spoken word of working-class families matters as much as any document, and on the quiet act of bringing a forgotten woman back to life and giving her some dignity. If you have ever wished you had asked more before it was too late, this one is for you.Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of domestic abuse, poverty and dying in poverty. Please do take care whilst listening or skip this episode if this could be distressing for you.Find out more: ourlives-ourstories.comAbout This Podcast:The Our Lives, Our Stories podcast features conversations about life stories, family history, memory, identity, and the moments that shape who we are.Our Mission:Our Lives, Our Stories is a living archive for our generation and the ones to follow. Our mission is to empower everyone to tell their story.Record Your Own Story:Our website https://www.ourlives-ourstories.com has free guides on how to unlock memories and record them.My Life, My Story:My Life, My Story is a guided legacy journal curated by Carl Chinn that includes prompts to help you reflect on your memories, experiences, and family history. It's a keepsake to help preserve your story, or a special gift for a parent, grandparent, or loved one.Available now on Amazon.https://ourlives-ourstories.com/mylifemystoryYour life matters. Your story matters.

Carl Chinn sits down with Nicola Silk, a Birmingham based producer and director whose life has been closely tied to television from the very beginning. She was one of the first children through the doors of the BBC Pebble Mill nursery, dancing with the Wombles on the lawn at four years old whilst her mum, a rare woman in 1960s television, worked in the studios nearby. From there, her story became, in many ways, the story of Birmingham telly itself.Nicola looks back on a childhood shaped by two faiths, a Catholic mom and a Jewish dad, and on teenage years spent playing keyboards in the bands. She talks about learning her craft at Pebble Mill, the generous mentors who shaped her, directing Travel Man with Richard Ayoade and later Joe Lycett, and how a curiosity about Birmingham grew into Joe Lycett's United States of Birmingham and a real, now annual International Day of Birmingham.

Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Dr Siobhán Stevenson, a Birmingham oral historian and audio producer who has spent her career capturing other people's life stories, from community radio volunteers to imprisoned people to the women who fought for gender equality in 1980s Birmingham. In this episode, the microphone turns the other way, and Siobhán tells her own story.She grew up in an Irish family from Dublin who settled in Birmingham, spent her early childhood in Cabra, and came back to Birmingham in 1979. She talks about the balance of being the Irish in England and the English in Ireland. She reflects on the strong women in her family, a non-traditional route back into education, a trip to India that changed how she saw the world, and the PhD on community radio that led her to a life spent giving voice to the voiceless.Content warning: This episode contains references to bereavement and the death of a child. Please do take care whilst listening or skip this episode if this could be distressing for you.Website - https://siobhanlstevenson.com

Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Dr Karamat Iqbal, an educator and historian whose life crosses two worlds. Karamat grew up in a village of ten houses in Kashmir, walking hours to school across the ravines, until at barely a teenager he was put on a plane and arrived in Nechells to live in the same house where his father had once lodged.Together they trace the history of Kashmiri and Mirpuri migration to Birmingham, from the Lascars and the pioneer generation to the first brick house in Karamat's village, built with money earned in a Birmingham factory. Karamat speaks of the racism he met on his first day at school, the eight years he did not speak to his parents, the languages he grew up between, and how, slowly, he fell in love with the city.It is a story about migration and belonging, about the community, and about the resilience of a boy who made a home in a place that did not always want him.Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of racism and racial violence. Please do take care whilst listening or skip this episode if this could be distressing for you.

Carl Chinn sits down with Rebecca McKinney, an outstanding headteacher and Catholic schools inspector whose story begins in a big, fiercely close Irish family with roots in the centre of Dublin and the countryside of Kildare. From her mom's childhood in the Bordesley Green back-to-backs to early starts on her dad's market stall, Rebecca grew up among strong women, hard graft and parents who believed their daughters could be anything.This is a conversation about belief and belonging. Rebecca reflects on the teacher who spotted her at ten and later opened the door to her career, on her late father's gentleness and the faith that keeps him close, and on a way of leading a school built on kindness rather than fear. She talks about greeting every child by name at the gate, treating parents as people and not problems, and the day her school refused to move one little boy on and built a new classroom so he could stay.It is a warm and quietly moving portrait of a proud Brummie-Irish woman who turned everything she was given, by her mom and dad, her aunties and the people who believed in her, into a life spent believing in others.

In this solo episode of Our Lives, Our Stories, Carl Chinn answered a question he has been asked all his life: what makes a historian? For years his answer was the books, the historical novels he read as a a child, from Robin Hood, William Tell and King Arthur to the writing of Rosemary Sutcliff and Henry Treece, which carried him from the Dark Ages to the Vikings, the Crusades and the mountains of the Caucasus.But looking back, Carl knows the real answer lies with his family. He remembers the Sunday afternoons of his childhood, the storytellers on both sides, his grandad Perry, struck down by multiple sclerosis, and his grandad Chinn, one of the old Contemptibles of 1914. He recalls his nan Lil Perry, the eldest of twelve who never had a childhood, and the old Brummagem words, clammed and wench, that carried a whole way of life. Through them, he found the hardships of the strong women in his family, the stories that led to his first books on poverty, the hated workhouse from which the NHS would one day emerge.This is a reflection on memory, dialect, belonging and why these stories matter, ending with Carl's heartfelt plea. His generation, he says, is the last who can tell you why the workhouse was hated and why the NHS is so loved. So grab hold of your oldest relatives and record their memories.