- Winners of First Bus short story competition to feature in BBC Radio 4’s ‘Bus Lines’
After receiving more than 250,000 listeners in 2016, the BBC Radio 4 documentary, ‘Bus Lines’, is to air again on Monday 20 March at 16:00. The programme highlights the talent behind the highly successful First Bus short story competition.
A number of employees from First Bus operations across the UK, including drivers from First Cymru, First West of England and First Glasgow are featured in the 30-minute documentary. They speak about their passion for writing and how First Bus’s 2014 short story competition gave them a platform to showcase their hidden skills.
The competition, which is to return with a launch planned later this year, is run in partnership with Unite the Union and encourages drivers, engineers, mechanics and office staff from across the UK to put pen to paper and submit a short story about anything at all. More than 500 employees took part in the competition in 2014.
Featured in the documentary is David, a driver from Glasgow, whose moving story inspired by a homeless man he spotted whilst driving through the city centre one Christmas. Whereas Sue, a driver from Bristol, talks in the documentary about loving the freedom of driving a bus around the city and writes poems and stories for her family. Lou, also a driver in Bristol, wants to write a novel based on her experiences driving buses: “You have a lot of weird and wonderful experiences driving a bus,” she said, “I even had passengers come to my wedding.” And Andrew, a driver from Llanelli, wrote about his time serving in Afghanistan in 2009.
Speaking about the BBC Radio 4’s documentary, Hansi Jackson, Head of Learning & Development at First Bus, said: “We’re thrilled that the BBC is going to air its fantastic documentary ‘Bus Lines’ again. The talent that some of my colleagues have for storytelling is remarkable and really inspiring. We’re delighted that the documentary was such a success and is to be repeated.”
She continued: “We want our people to recognise and embrace the benefits of learning as an investment in their future. The idea of our short story competition was to encourage colleagues to try something different, learn a new skill, use our Learning Centres and unlock their potential. We’re looking forward to launching the 2017 competition and seeing if we can discover the next JK Rowling, Roald Dahl or Ian Rankin.”
Dave Pugh, National Education Coordinator within First Bus, said: “Unite and First Bus work very effectively in partnership to champion the benefits of lifelong learning. The short story competition is one of the most popular and successful campaigns we’ve ever run, as proved by the interest from the BBC. I’m delighted that we’ve agreed to re-launch the competition in 2017.”
‘Bus Lines’ is available to listen via the BBC iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06vmw29