Creating Black Cultural Archives’ Podcast Series
By Milan Wright, BCA Intern
Behind-the-scenes of creating the Black Cultural Archives podcast
Exciting times are upon us, Black Cultural Archives (BCA) is launching its very own podcast series, and I am the creator! As a student from the University of Leeds on a nine-month placement, I had the exciting and daunting task of making the most of my limited time whilst creating something new and of my own volition: a podcast series.
The concept came on my first day at BCA. A podcast was on the cards to elevate the impact of Seeing Ourselves, a project that aims to increase the representation of Black and Global majority persons in the arts and heritage sector. Being an avid podcast listener and ready for a challenge, I volunteered to make it my main project, having no clue about the behind-the-scenes of creating a podcast but having (almost) all the faith that I would figure it out!
The first step was the structure. The brief was to create a series about the arts and heritage sector to help young people with their career prospects. But how? As a young person who looks to media to support my personal and professional life, I thought of a simple interview between a host and a successful professional in the industry who would be willing to delve into the ins and outs of their journey and the industry at large. Wanting to make this project a success, we leaned on the expertise of our funders, Elevate Lambeth. We requested advice from some of the “Elevators” who knew how to approach the podcast to get young people to listen and I presented the outline and our aims for the podcast. The feedback was to make it feel professional, to utilise our community, to ensure guests get into the nitty gritty of how they kick-started their careers, and to show our audience the multitude of roles one can have in the same industry e.g. in the entertainment industry, you can be an actor, but also a director, showrunner, costume designer, gaffer, set designer, prop master etc.
The natural next step was to create a script outline that would touch all aspects of one’s career journey, starting at the very beginning, childhood. Then it was to choose the guests who had a wealth of knowledge and advice but didn't feel inaccessible or hard to reach. Luckily, there are plenty of established Black professionals in and around London that came to mind and when I was stuck, the internet was my best friend. Black Cultural Archives have great connections with the community, and the team were lovely enough to put me in touch. With the guest list selected, the next challenge was finding a host. There were two finalists and we decided to go with Binta Yade, a cultural leader with Poetic Unity, an organisation that Black Cultural Archives is in partnership with and whose previous experience included interview podcasting – a perfect match!
Podcast Production Programme with Clovis from Oxygen Arts
Since this was part of the Seeing Ourselves project, which is about workforce development, it felt necessary to include the community in the process and so the Podcast Production Programme was born. The idea around this was to recruit young people from the community to come to BCA and learn how to create a podcast from scratch and then record and edit our episodes, making them our production team for the series – also helpful for me! It would be something they could put on their CV and take with them to create other projects. We partnered with Oxygen Arts for the training, and I created the application form, kept track of the applicants, and conducted the interviews that would eventually select the final 12; all this for the first time. I also created social media content for the programme, including the reels, stories, and the programme poster.
The 12 young people we recruited were from Lambeth, South London, East London, and the surrounding areas. They had the opportunity to play with the podcast equipment, learn how to set it up, take it down, record and use editing software – all for free! This programme was also a great opportunity for the young people to meet other creatives in the same boat as them, early in their careers with so many dreams and all the potential. Deciding the 12 participants also meant thinking about how they would blend and mingle with each other, it was more than just choosing the right people for BCA, but also about how it would benefit the young people in their personal and professional lives. I quickly became a professional party planner and host, contemplating how each would get along as small groups and as a whole. To my delight, it worked!
After each session seeing everyone mingle and exchange contacts with promises of supporting each other’s creative events was amazing. For me, meeting these people, my peers, and navigating the weird balance of being both a peer and a supervisor whilst creating my own London network of creatives and academics was a happy bonus that came out of this programme and something to take with me once I leave.
We had the challenge of linking the podcast back to the archives, beyond just another interview and careers podcast. We came up with the great idea of including historical introductions that took the listener back to a moment in history where a Black person was a successful musician or actor before segueing to the main interview. This became a creative writing opportunity for our young people to visit the archives, write an introduction and edit it how they saw fit, giving them full creative control. This would also make for an empowering story to listen to for a young professional – learning that our ancestors walked this path before and succeeded, giving us all the confidence that we can do the same and more.
Choosing the guests was both fun and stressful. We had our ideal list but not all responded, and some were not accepting speaking engagements. Learning how to pivot and adjust was the biggest learning curve and thanks to this project, I am more familiar and comfortable with it now. Everything from communicating with the guests, booking them in with us and taking care of them during their time at BCA was my responsibility, which I'm proud of.
Binta Yade, Cultural Leader
Meeting our incredibly talented host, Binta Yade and working with her to create the guests' portfolios and personalised questions was fun and thought-provoking. Watching her interview people first-hand and engage with the guests was like magic. Seeing my idea being brought to fruition and listening to the depth and flow of the conversations, I found myself, in those moments, looking at my life and learning from the guests, which are things I will take with me forever.
In alignment with the community-first compass we had for this project and with the helpful tip from our friends at Elevate Lambeth, I reached out to Raw Material in Brixton to commission a young creative to produce our intro and outro music. A bit of back-and-forth and some lost emails later, we set up a meeting and briefed young creative, Erica Boateng to create a few drafts of chill, uplifting, afro-centric instrumentals. We set our hearts on one and this became our official music for the podcast. All of sudden all the pieces began to come together. Curating the schedule for the post-production sessions and listening as the individual recordings came together to form a seamless episode was a beautiful culmination of the ideas I had back in October.
The practical side for me was just as exciting. I worked with BCA’s marketing team to create a strategy for promotion and maximum engagement, selecting and communicating with micro-influencers to help widen our reach and envisioning how they can help share our mission was adventurous. Not to mention having creative control over the podcast artwork and editing the historical introductions was a wonderful opportunity for me to explore. This whole project has been a massive growing experience for me and one that has tested my creativity, competence, and imagination. Everything from the admin to the execution of this podcast series has been birthed and steered of my own volition. When it launches on Wednesday, 19th July 2023, I hope the public will resonate with the content and become inspired by the words of our guests to get up and go after what you want; I know I will!
Biography –
Milan Wright is a student at the University of Leeds. She is an undergraduate student in Philosophy and has aspirations to become a writer focusing on topics of neo-colonialism and emancipation. Milan is pursuing a career in art & history curation and consultancy for art galleries & museums across the UK and worldwide.