Our Lives, Our Stories with Carl Chinn – Details, episodes & analysis

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Our Lives, Our Stories with Carl Chinn

Our Lives, Our Stories

History

Society & Culture

Frequency: 1 episode/9d. Total Eps: 21

Our Lives, Our Stories is hosted by social historian and writer Carl Chinn MBE, whose life’s work has been dedicated to bringing to the fore the lives and stories of people too often left out of traditional history books.

This podcast is built on a simple but powerful belief: that history must be democratised and that every person’s story matters.

In each episode, Carl sits down with guests ranging from well-known figures to community activists and changemakers, exploring the personal histories, experiences, challenges and moments that have shaped who they are.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Lyle Bignon

Episode 20

Friday, July 31, 2026 • Duration 47:27

Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Lyle Bignon, Birmingham's Night Time Economy Ambassador and a lifelong champion of the city's music and culture.

Growing up in Balsall Heath as a third-generation Irish, second-generation French Brummie, Lyle found music everywhere, in Dublin record shops, in his father's violin workshop, and in the Irish traditional sessions of Pat Molloy. He talks about identity, belonging, a recent ADHD diagnosis, and why he now spends his days fighting for the survival of Birmingham's nightlife and the people who make their living after dark.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Siobhán Stevenson

Episode 19

Friday, July 24, 2026 • Duration 48:23

Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Dr Siobhán Stevenson, a Birmingham oral historian and audio producer who has spent her career capturing other people's life stories, from community radio volunteers to imprisoned people to the women who fought for gender equality in 1980s Birmingham. In this episode, the microphone turns the other way, and Siobhán tells her own story.

She grew up in an Irish family from Dublin who settled in Birmingham, spent her early childhood in Cabra, and came back to Birmingham in 1979. She talks about the balance of being the Irish in England and the English in Ireland. She reflects on the strong women in her family, a non-traditional route back into education, a trip to India that changed how she saw the world, and the PhD on community radio that led her to a life spent giving voice to the voiceless.

Content warning: This episode contains references to bereavement and the death of a child. Please do take care whilst listening or skip this episode if this could be distressing for you.

Website - https://siobhanlstevenson.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Dr Karamat Iqbal

Episode 18

Friday, July 17, 2026 • Duration 56:25

Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Dr Karamat Iqbal, an educator and historian whose life crosses two worlds. Karamat grew up in a village of ten houses in Kashmir, walking hours to school across the ravines, until at barely a teenager he was put on a plane and arrived in Nechells to live in the same house where his father had once lodged.

Together they trace the history of Kashmiri and Mirpuri migration to Birmingham, from the Lascars and the pioneer generation to the first brick house in Karamat's village, built with money earned in a Birmingham factory. Karamat speaks of the racism he met on his first day at school, the eight years he did not speak to his parents, the languages he grew up between, and how, slowly, he fell in love with the city.

It is a story about migration and belonging, about the community, and about the resilience of a boy who made a home in a place that did not always want him.

Content warning: This episode contains descriptions of racism and racial violence. Please do take care whilst listening or skip this episode if this could be distressing for you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Rebecca McKinney

Episode 17

Friday, July 3, 2026 • Duration 48:18

Carl Chinn sits down with Rebecca McKinney, an outstanding headteacher and Catholic schools inspector whose story begins in a big, fiercely close Irish family with roots in the centre of Dublin and the countryside of Kildare. From her mom's childhood in the Bordesley Green back-to-backs to early starts on her dad's market stall, Rebecca grew up among strong women, hard graft and parents who believed their daughters could be anything.

This is a conversation about belief and belonging. Rebecca reflects on the teacher who spotted her at ten and later opened the door to her career, on her late father's gentleness and the faith that keeps him close, and on a way of leading a school built on kindness rather than fear. She talks about greeting every child by name at the gate, treating parents as people and not problems, and the day her school refused to move one little boy on and built a new classroom so he could stay.

It is a warm and quietly moving portrait of a proud Brummie-Irish woman who turned everything she was given, by her mom and dad, her aunties and the people who believed in her, into a life spent believing in others.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Making A Historian with Carl Chinn

Episode 16

Thursday, June 25, 2026 • Duration 39:05

In this solo episode of Our Lives, Our Stories, Carl Chinn answered a question he has been asked all his life: what makes a historian? For years his answer was the books, the historical novels he read as a a child, from Robin Hood, William Tell and King Arthur to the writing of Rosemary Sutcliff and Henry Treece, which carried him from the Dark Ages to the Vikings, the Crusades and the mountains of the Caucasus.

But looking back, Carl knows the real answer lies with his family. He remembers the Sunday afternoons of his childhood, the storytellers on both sides, his grandad Perry, struck down by multiple sclerosis, and his grandad Chinn, one of the old Contemptibles of 1914. He recalls his nan Lil Perry, the eldest of twelve who never had a childhood, and the old Brummagem words, clammed and wench, that carried a whole way of life. Through them, he found the hardships of the strong women in his family, the stories that led to his first books on poverty, the hated workhouse from which the NHS would one day emerge.

This is a reflection on memory, dialect, belonging and why these stories matter, ending with Carl's heartfelt plea. His generation, he says, is the last who can tell you why the workhouse was hated and why the NHS is so loved. So grab hold of your oldest relatives and record their memories.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Father's Day Special

Episode 15

Sunday, June 21, 2026 • Duration 59:32

This Father's Day special, Carl Chinn and some of our guests over the passed year share the stories of the fathers and grandfathers who made them. From a working class bookmaker who played football on the rec and ran the school team because no teacher would, to a Jamaican-Irish poet whose dad quoted Shakespeare and Kipling off the cuff, from a German Jewish refugee who arrived aged 13 on the Kindertransport to a boxing coach who spent nearly four decades giving everything to lads from deprived Birmingham neighbourhoods and never charged a single one, these are the men who stayed, who worked, and who shaped the people around them in ways still being felt.

This is an episode about presence and absence, inheritance and identity.

Trigger warning: This episode contains discussion of the Holocaust, the Kindertransport, family bereavement and Partition violence. Please do take care whilst listening or skip this episode if this could be distressing for you.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Stacey Barnfield

Episode 14

Thursday, June 11, 2026 • Duration 52:27

Carl Chinn sits down with Stacey Barnfield, journalist, former editor of the Birmingham Post, photographer, and creator of the Colour Palette Company and Draw My City. Stacey grew up in Chelmsley Wood and Yardley, proud of both, and that sense of place runs through everything he has built.

They talk about Stacey's path from print room runner at the Birmingham Post and Mail to deputy editor of the Birmingham Mail and editor of the Birmingham Post, and the pressures of leading local newspapers through the digital shift. Stacey also shares the story behind his colour palettes, born in lockdown and now displayed in museum gift shops from Liverpool to Glasgow, and the photography that captures Birmingham's changing face one frame at a time.

Learn more about Stacey's work: edwinelliscreativemedia.com / thecolourpalettecompany.com / drawmycity.co.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Kate Knowles

Episode 13

Tuesday, June 2, 2026 • Duration 40:08

Carl Chinn sits down in conversation with Kate Knowles, editor of the Birmingham Dispatch, a reader-funded online paper covering the stories that matter most to the West Midlands.

They talk about Kate's background, how she became a journalist and what it takes to run an independent local paper

Content warning: This episode contains discussion of mental health struggles and some strong language. Please do take care whilst listening.

Learn more about the Birmingham Dispatch: https://birminghamdispatch.co.uk

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Toby Gorniak MBE

Episode 12

Tuesday, May 26, 2026 • Duration 01:16:07

Carl Chinn is joined by educator, speaker, community activist and inspirational founder of the Gorniak Method, Toby Gorniak MBE, who grew up in Poland one of the stigmatised Roma community before arriving in Britain as a teenager seeking safety and a new beginning.

They talk about Toby’s childhood experiences of discrimination and violence, the strength of family and importance of Roma culture, arriving in England as a refugee, and discovering purpose through dance, education and community work.

Toby also reflects on the transformative meeting with his wife, becoming a father himself, and how his experiences have shaped the work he now does helping young people and communities build confidence, resilience and belief in themselves.

This is a conversation about identity, belonging, kindness and the power of choosing hope and positive action in the face of adversity and prejudice.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Christina Longden

Episode 11

Tuesday, May 19, 2026 • Duration 01:12:13

Carl Chinn is joined by author, community builder and his former student Christina Longden, who grew up in the mill town of Dukinfield, near Stalybridge, and was among the first in her family to go to university. Since then, she has spent her life uncovering the stories that others left behind.

They talk about her growing up working class in the north of England; the class and accent prejudice she encountered at university; and the astonishing family discovery that her great-great-great-grandfather Robert Stanley, a Victorian grocer, magistrate and mayor of Stalybridge, converted to Islam at the age of 69 and was then quietly erased from the family memory for a hundred years.

This is a conversation about identity, belonging, and what happens when ordinary people dare to think for themselves. Christina's books, her work through the Lorna Young Foundation and her community interest company Pastruisms all carry the same belief: that every life has a story worth telling, and that those stories can bring people together across every kind of difference.

Links:

"His Own Man" by Christina Longden — https://www.amazon.co.uk/His-Own-Man-Victorian-Reschid/dp/0992879248

"Imagining Robert" by Christina Longden — https://www.amazon.co.uk/Imagining-Robert-Reschid-Stanley-1828-1911/dp/0992879256

Past Truisms CIC — https://www.facebook.com/pasttruisms

Lorna Young Foundation — https://www.lyf.org.uk/

Dark Woods Coffee - https://darkwoodscoffee.co.uk/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Our Lives, Our Stories with Carl Chinn – Details, episodes & analysis

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Our Lives, Our Stories with Carl Chinn – Details, episodes & analysis

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