INGE
OOSTERHOFF
TAKE THE TROUBLES AWAY
My first full-length radio documentary 'Take the Troubles away' (Drie weken zonder Troubles) aired on Dutch public radio with Radio Doc on November 24, 2019.
For twenty years, a remarkable project took place in a small Dutch town called Hazerswoude Rijndijk. Teenagers from Belfast – half of them from a nationalist Catholic area, half of them from a unionist Protestant area – stayed with local host families for three weeks and went on group outings. In Belfast, their neighborhoods were separated by walls and barbed wire. In the Netherlands they shared one bedroom with the "enemy."
The project was meant to bring the two sides of the Northern Irish conflict closer together, but no one knew what happened to the teenagers after they returned home. Inge Oosterhoff was a toddler when her parents took part in this project. Now, thirty years later and on the brink of Brexit, she tracks down the two women who stayed with her family as teenagers, to find out how look back on their stay in the Netherlands. It changed their lives forever, but for entirely different reasons than everyone thought.
Listen to the full documentary here – bilingual transcript.
You can also listen to a 3-min sample below and read along with the English transcript here.
* Warning: sample contains spoilers!
PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE – NON-FICTION STORYTELLING
In a candid conversation with Dutch journalist Inge Oosterhoff, The New Yorker staff writer and bestselling non-fiction author Patrick Radden Keefe talks all about the best way to tell a true story and how to arrange the truth into a compelling narrative that reads like a novel. He explains why he believes access is overrated, why footnotes offer creative freedom, and how he came to terms with the understanding that there were stories he didn’t need to tell.
Host and interview: Inge Oosterhoff
Editing, mixing and sound design: Wederik de Backer
Research: Inge Oosterhoff, Roos van der Lint, Evelien Kunst
Executive producers: Judith Eigeman and Laura Das
Senior production: Evelien Kunst
Music: Chad Crouch
Audio excerpts: Penguin Random House audio and the radio documentary ‘The Chaplans Diary’ by Lorelei Harris for RTE Radio 1.
This True Stories online podcast was made for the Narrative Journalism Foundation which aims to support Dutch journalists who want to improve their skills in working in a narrative form.