{"id":505652,"date":"2026-06-18T07:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T07:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/505652\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T07:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T07:12:08","slug":"bbc-radio-2-folk-project-to-mark-listeners-lives-in-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/505652\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC Radio 2 folk project to mark listeners’ lives in song"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman who overcame injury to train as a firefighter is among five BBC Radio listeners who have had their lives portrayed in original folk songs.<\/p>\n

Hannah Lancaster, from Ludlow, Shropshire, suffered years of debilitating headaches after a cycle crash.<\/p>\n

Hers is among the stories brought to life in BBC Radio 2’s 21st Century Folk project<\/a>, with the songs being unveiled at the end of June. Hannah’s – called The Long Way Home – has been written by Birmingham folk artist Katherine Priddy.<\/p>\n

The project also features listeners Andy Tams, from Staffordshire, Victor Macauley, from London, Teessider Jackie Freeman and Jonathan Doku from Glasgow.<\/p>\n

The finished songs, all composed and performed by well-known folk artists, will be broadcast on BBC Sounds and Radio 2 from 29 June.<\/p>\n

Presenter Mark Radcliffe said: “I couldn’t be prouder of 21st Century Folk – yet again creating top-quality original songs to celebrate the stories of tribulations overcome by five remarkable individuals.”<\/p>\n

Previous series featured themes including north-east England and the 200th birthday of Britain’s railways. <\/p>\n

Hannah Lancaster took up cycling as an outlet while coping with her role as a young carer for her sister Sally. On a training ride, she crashed at 40mph and suffered a brain injury before coming back to qualify as a firefighter.<\/p>\n

Andy Tams is a nurse from Walsall in the West Midlands, now living in Staffordshire.<\/p>\n

His uncle was killed on the road at Christmas time in 1974, aged just 18. Thirty-five years later, he took his Uncle Adrian’s old leather boxing gloves to BBC One’s The Repair Shop where they were restored by master saddler, Suzie Fletcher. <\/p>\n

His story has been turned into The Hand of Kindness (Adrian’s Song) by singer and guitarist Martin Simpson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman who overcame injury to train as a firefighter is among five BBC Radio listeners who have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":["post-505652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}