Fostered for real

AS the nation’s most famous foster kid, Tracy Beaker introduced thousands of children to life in care with her colourful adventures. Now, in a special halfhour programme, The Real Tracy Beaker, actress Dani Harmer teams up with CBBC’s Newsround to explore what life is like for some of the 70,000 real Tracy Beakers across the country.

Following the stories of ten-year-old Jerome, twins Laura and Charlotte, teenagers Layla, Glen and their carers, she’s heartened to learn that they don’t dwell on the past but have real high hopes for their futures.

She finds out what being a “looked-after” child really means as the children share how they coped, their worries about what their friends would think and the sadness of leaving their families.

Using the show’s own engaging animation by illustrator Nick Sharratt, footage from Tracy’s regular adventures and contributions from creator Jacqueline Wilson, The Real Tracy Beaker tells the stories of the children who are growing up in their own Dumping Grounds with sensitivity and a sense of reassurance.

The Real Tracy Beaker is the latest in Newsround’s award-winning Specials series.

CAROLINE QUENTIN was visiting India for her ITV1 documentary earlier this week. Now Griff Rhys Jones heads for that same country for Hidden Treasures of Indian Art to conclude his search for the traditional and often hidden arts still flourishing around the world today.

His journey is triggered by a stunning, handembroidered, 18th Century floor cloth, kept at Hardwick Hall, in Derbyshire. Little is known about the cloth, apart from the fact that it came from the Gujarat Province. Jones hopes to find out who made it and how, and whether the skills that produced such a work still exist in India today.

His quest begins in the multicultural melting-pot that is Ahmadabad, the capital of Gujarat and India’s fastest-growing city. Here, in the poorer districts, he finds surprising evidence that some ancient skills have survived, such as the hand-painting of shrine cloths. When he sees them put to use at a ceremony for the Hindu Festival of Navaratri, it becomes clear that these textiles are still imbued with great value and significance.

In the magnificent Moghal Palace of Mirrors, in Kutch, one of the most remote and least visited parts of Gujarat, he’s shown a floor cloth even more stunning than the one at Hardwick Hall and made by the same technique. But when he meets the descendant of the last Mochi embroiderer, he learns that the skills needed to create such a piece have been lost.

However, the practice of handprinting, dyeing and embroidering has not died out altogether and he discovers that textiles are still the glue that binds disparate communities together.

Some of the centuries-old techniques are introduced to children as young as three, and artistic traditions have been kept alive by the custom of dowry gifts. A young girl must come to marriage with handembroidered textiles which can take decades to sew. He’s allowed to see the contents of one villager’s precious dowry chest. Although these people are some of the poorest in India, their embroidered textiles are highly prized across the world.

THE fifth film in BBC Four’s major Tony Palmer retrospective season, The Kindness Of Strangers, explores the career of composer and pianist Andre Previn.

Previn was born in Berlin in 1929 and emigrated in 1938 to the United States, where his family settled in Hollywood. The four-time Oscar winner’s career reached a climax in 1998 with the world premiere of his first opera, A Streetcar Named Desire, at the San Francisco Opera.

He talks openly about himself during the backstage trials and tribulations, from first rehearsals to opening night, as the film offers insights into his remarkable international life and career.

The New York Times described The Kindness Of Strangers as “a profoundly disquieting study of loneliness and the frailty of human relationships”.