A Stitch in Time
Czech Radio 2022
I was approached by Leah Gaffen from Class Acts, an initiative that works with bilingual children in the Czech Republic. Leah and her colleagues invited children and teenagers between eleven and eighteen to write a story in English about someone in their family who had inspired them or influenced how they see the world. Our cooperation resulted in the six-part podcast A Stitch in Time.
The participants were invited to the radio and we recorded them reading their stories and talking about how they developed their ideas. Many of the stories are beautifully and sensitively written. At the same time they offer subtle and often unexpected insights into recent Czech and Czechoslovak history, and sometimes into places far beyond this country’s borders – fragments of 20th century history reflected in the stories of individual families. There is drama, sometimes tragedy and loss, but also a great deal of humour.
In this series we join them on a journey into the past, but from the perspective of a generation that is looking to the future.
The title, A Stitch in Time, is inspired by one of the stories, written by 17-year-old Johana Trejtnar. She writes about her great-grandmother and a dress she made that has stayed in the family to this day.
“History is hidden in the stitches in the seams of this dress,” she writes, and I think Johana’s words sum up beautifully the way that each family’s past is sewn into the present.
Here are the individual episodes
And here is a link to the project on the Radio Prague International website, where you can listen to the podcast, and read and hear the stories: