Audiocraft 2016 is coming!

I’m super excited to be working on a new project Audiocraft, a conference for Australian radiomakers and podcasters that’s happening on March 5th.

Audiocraft will be a day for producers to come together and talk, listen and learn about making great stories with sound. We have a stellar line up of presenters who’ll be leading workshops and panel discussions on narrative techniques, podcasting, sound design and collaborative storytelling.

It’s about building a stronger community of content makers and talking about all the nerdy stuff, and I can’t wait!

Audiocraft is an idea that’s been brewing for a while. When I went to the Third Coast International Audio Festival in 2014 I was blown away by being in a room of 500 radio folk who shared the same passion for telling stories with sound. I also realised that we don’t have anything like it in Australia, so something had to be done.

Over the last months I’ve been working with a group of absolute legends to make it happen. Here’s a few us being geeks and paying tribute to our trail blazing heroes at Third Coast.

The response to Audiocraft so far has been amazing. We sold out of our tickets 2 months before the conference date and so many people have come forward to offer their support. I think there’s a real desire for people to come together in this way. It’s an exciting time to be making audio, but it can also be a lonely gig, and there are a lot of big questions about the future of podcasting and radio broadcast that haven’t really been answered. So hopefully we can talk through some of these issues, build some great networks, and inspire creative collaborations!

Radiogaga Panel – EWF

I had heaps of fun chatting with fellow audio nerds Jaye Kranz, Tiger Webb and Heidi Pett on the Radio Gaga panel at Melbourne’s Emerging Writers Festival. We shared ideas about radio’s ‘New Journalism’ phase and how the role of the narrator might be shifting from a traditionally objective standpoint to a more subjective voice.

There are mixed feelings about this trend which is often seen as a shift to a more American style of radio. But I think it’s a great opportunity for producers to be a little less stodgy, or authoritative, and perhaps be more transparent about their role as storytellers within their work. We often make radio about things we genuinely care about, and as long as we don’t start stepping all over the story unnecessarily, an active voice might inject an authenticity into the work that we want to share. It might also help develop different creative audio styles and more distinct producer voices. You can really hear this in independent podcasts like Love and Radio and Strangers.

So if a subjective voice serves the story and moves the narrative forward in an interesting way, then why not utilise it? Perhaps the dilemma is how to not to let a ‘trend’ overtake the question of purpose, and consider what works best for each individual story.

Serial and the podcast explosion

I listened to this fantastic panel discussion on the recent “explosion” in the popularity of podcasts. Moderated by The New York Times’ David Carr, it’s a pretty impressive line up with Sarah Koenig from Serial, Alex Blumberg from Start-Up, Alix Speigel from Invisibilia, and Benjamin Walker from Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything. They chat about the recent wave of podcast fever that peaked with Serial’s huge success in late 2014.

It’s widely known now that Serial is pretty much the single most popular podcast EVER. And it’s success has created a lot of excitement about the potential of making and distributing audio stories outside traditional radio broadcast. A lot of interesting ideas come up in this conversation, but what I loved most was the sense that podcasting offers a space to try new things and tell great stories with fewer rules and restrictions.

You can watch the full video of the discussion here…

Storology 2014

I went to the Walkey Foundations’ Storyology conference in Sydney recently. It’s a gathering and information-blast for journalists and media-makers from Australia and overseas. Despite the slight depression in the air after the news of budget cuts and huge job losses at the ABC, there was still some inspiration to be had.

I really enjoyed the practical sessions like Aela Callan’s (Al Jazeera) ‘writing tight for TV and radio’ and ‘DIY Radio Doco’ with Gretchen Miller (ABC Radio National).

But my favourite session was Geraldine Doogue and David Leser in conversation about personal narratives. They talked about journalists crossing over into the unfamiliar territory of sharing their own story. They highlighted the increasing demand for ‘the personal’ in the media, and journalists’ hesitancy to share their own narrative. As Davis Leser pointed out:

“we set the conversation but never reveal our motivation”

David’s began writing his most recent book as a biography about his father, but it soon shifted to memoir.

“I couldn’t write about him without writing about myself”

He ended up producing a deeply personal portrait of father and son, and the complexities of family. For the first time, he turned his skills of investigation and truth seeking towards himself.

Geraldine shared her reluctance to write a memoir because she doesn’t feel ready to confront her grief over her husband’s death. But David argued that’s the perfect reason to write one. He suggested that writing about grief and writing through grief was the most cathartic way for him to recover after his father’s death.

“the writer’s job is to utter the unutterable and to find the truths that come to all of us….. [and] grief is what unites us. All those walls of separation drop in the valley of grief”

I found these two great thinkers incredibly honest and generous with their own experiences. And it definitely got me thinking more about the positives of being brave and sharing one’s own story, and how it might make us better equipped to help others share their personal story.

Research interviews- LeAlan Jones

I’m in Chicago at the moment doing some research interviews and gearing up for the Third Coast Conference this weekend.

On my first day in the city I met up with LeAlan Jones who shared his personal story in the seminal radio documentary Ghetto Life 101. In 1993, LeAlan (thirteen at the time) and his friend Lloyd Newman (fourteen) collaborated with public radio producer David Isay and produced audio diaries of their life in Chicago’s notorious South Side public housing projects. The boys’ candor, humor and honesty provided the listener with a direct perspective of the harsh realities of poverty and violence in their neighbourhood. Ghetto Life 101 won numerous awards and to this day is considered a significant work in the history of radio documentaries. Along with LeAlan and Lloyd’s follow up piece Remorse: the 14 Stories of Eric Morse (1996), these works championed a new style of self-authored storytelling on the radio.

My conversation with LeAlan is a part of a series of interviews I’m doing for my PhD research into the experience of people who share their story as part of a radio documentary. LeAlan and I chatted about how he feels listening to Ghetto Life and Remorse today. I was curious about how documenting his story all those years ago may have affected his life. One thing that came up was how LeAlan negotiates his youthful perspective and insights recorded in the documentaries, with his 35-year-old self today.

” the most difficult thing for anybody to be, is to be honest with them self. And for me, my life is disciplined by the voice of that 13 year old, and the honesty of the 13 year old”

I got the feeling that LeAlan’s story, eternalised on the public record, has been a check point for him throughout his life, and one that he is immensely grateful for. LeAlan also talked about how sharing his story gave him a stronger sense of his own “voice” and the importance of his own narrative:

“The voice is consistent [and] documentation is what allows humanity to evolve….. growing up I was very fascinated by ancient Egypt, [and] more importantly, I was always fascinated by the writing they had on those tombs …. So for me, the microphone is my ability to document my tomb. I mean I’m going to die one day, but I’m going to live forever through my voice”