A Positive Life: HIV from Terrence Higgins to Today – BBC Wales / BBC Sounds

For the past several months I have been working on this new 8-part podcast with Overcoat Media for BBC Wales and BBC Sounds. A Positive Life is presented by Sam Smith and it looks at the HIV epidemic in the UK over the last forty years.

Episodes are coming out now, and they’ll be available at this link or on any podcast app: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0cgd4vm

This July is forty years since Terrence Higgins became one of the first people in the UK to die from an AIDS-related illness. So this podcast begins by exploring his life – from his childhood in Wales to his adult years in London. It then moves beyond Terry’s life to hear stories from a range of people who’ve been affected by HIV in the UK over the past four decades.

This is one of those projects where you feel it’s a real privilege to speak to every contributor, and to be trusted to help tell the stories they’re sharing. It took a very large amount of work and care to make this, but I feel proud of what we’ve done. And I hope that it contributes something of value to the historical record of HIV in this country, as well as helping share useful and important information about HIV too. That’s been my goal anyway.

I was the lead producer on the series and the sound designer. I worked with assistant producer Emma Goswell (who has a number of other podcasts including Coming Out Stories and Effin’ Hormones), executive producer Steven Rajam from Overcoat Media, Michael Surcombe and Amy Wheel from Overcoat Media, Mike Woolley did the sound mixing, and we had additional production and sound design from Nada Smiljanic and Emma Barnaby.