Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast V.I.Pod

Today's episode of V.I.Pod has a distinctly horticultural flavour where Alan Thorpe talks to the appropriately named and accomplished gardener, Frank Gardener. Frank is visually impaired, but that doesn't interfere with his skills in nurturing plants. Frank describes a life in gardening as well as giving valuable hints and tips from his garden and potting shed.

Lucy Wilcox then follows with a list of events happening in and around Sheffield throughout April.

In this edition V.I.Pod looks to the world of braille,particularly to the work of Sheffield Talking News’ Alan Thorpe who not only teaches braille but is the only certified repairer in the UK of the Perkins braille typewriter, the world’s most widely used braille machine. 

Here, we run an interview that our colleagues at Doncaster Talking Newspaper did with Alan just a few weeks ago where we learn of the continuing importance of braille, even in this digital age.

In this edition of V.I.Pod we join our visually impaired reporter, Alan Thorpe, at the Sheffield Royal Society for the Blind’s sensory garden in Graves Park.  After a tour of the garden with Alan and Sheffield Talking News’s Kerry Moon, we hear from two of the movers and shakers behind the project. The podcast ends with a round up of many of the things happening in Sheffield in March, including warnings of travel disruption due to the Sheffield half marathon on 23rd.

Here we give an international round-up of Chinese New Year. Tianu Li, a Chinese student at Sheffield University and an editor with Sheffield Talking News, gives a rundown of the lunar zodiac as she waits in the airport preparing to fly home - highlighting 2025 as the year of the snake. Once in China she takes us into a supermarket to provide a colourful picture of Chinese families preparing for the big celebration.

Back in Sheffield, Sandra Thorpe who is visually impaired happened to capture the ribbon cutting ceremony in the Peace Gardens that kicked-off Sheffield's celebration of Chinese New Year. She also witnessed the symbolic eye dotting ceremony that brought the ceremonial lion to life. That happened on the Saturday, and the following day Kerry Richards and Alan Thorpe were there to watch and hear the amazing acrobatic feats of the dancers from Foshan, China as they animated their lions to leap and dance from platform to platform in Fargate.

Any Sheffielder, visually impaired or not, will know about Granelli’s ice cream and sweet shop, which must sit high within the list of oldest confectionary shops in the UK.  Although the business was set up a few years earlier, the shop has been trading from its now famous spot on Broad Street since 1874.  In this episode of V.I.Pod, a media student from Sheffield College, Heidi Clark, visited the Granelli shop to delve into its history and give us this intriguing report. 

Tempted by her report of chocolate covered brazil nuts and their special Yorkshire mix, our visually impaired contributor, Alan Thorpe, set off from the tram stop on Fitzalan Square with his assistance dog Velvet to walk to the shop.  Alan provides a recording of his walk, recounting an amusing memory on the way of when he used to live in the nearby canal basin.

In this the first episode, V.I.Pod talks to a group of actors at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre whose aim, through a creative approach to audio description (AD), is to make live theatre as vibrant and exciting for visually impaired audiences as it is for their sighted counterparts. The show we'll be looking at is their take on the Sheffield Crucible's Christmas musical, Little Shop of Horrors.  We then talk to a visually impaired person who experienced the AD  - was she shocked or not?'