BBC Open University Production Centre

Designer and engineer Zoe Laughlin explores the world of material science, uncovering the innovations in manufacturing that are set to change the world we live in.

Dramatizations and actual archival film footage and photographs combine to relate the life of American composer Charles Ives and to document the musical background which influenced his work. Composers Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter reminisce about Ives and discuss his music.

Three presenters, three continents and three of the poorest countries in the world formed the backdrop for the BBC TV documentary, A Mile In Their Shoes. The programme followed Nick Knowles, Patrick Kielty and Victoria Beckham on extraordinary journeys through Zambia, India and Peru. Their experiences highlighted where the money raised by Sport Relief was being put to work. The presenters joined three children to experience everyday life in three areas the charity is battling to help. Victoria travelled to Peru to meet 11-year-old Dinah - who lives and works on a rubbish tip. Of the 250,000 children working in Peru's capital, Lima, 80% are under the age of 12. In rural areas the situation is no better, with a huge 62% of school-aged children suffering from malnutrition. Victoria met Dinah, who is 11 years old. Dinah's mum died three years ago and she lives and works with her dad on a rubbish tip.

Banaba is a remote and tiny island in the Pacific Ocean, about 50-miles South of the Equator, at the Western limit of the Republic of Kiribati. Once it was known as Ocean Island, named after ship that “discovered” it. Once it was the colonial capital of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, and one of the British Empire’s richest sources of phosphate, the raw material for the fertiliser that enriched the soil of Australia and New Zealand. From 1900 to 1979, phosphate mining devastated Banaba, leaving a landscape of barren coral outcrops and rusting machinery. Most Banabans now live in Fiji, two thousand miles away from Banaba, on Rabi Island (pronounced ‘Rambi’) to which the British exiled them in 1945, after three years of intense suffering under Japanese occupation. In July 1997, a small group of Banabans and ex-miners made a return journey to the island that was once their home. This documentary tells the story.