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
http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/embed.aspx/m=101582105,t=1,mt=video
The Teens' Speech | MySpace Video