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

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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.

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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.

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