Join UnionDocs and Avery Trufelman (99% Invisible, Articles of Interest named one of the best podcasts of 2022 by the New York Times) for a three-day intensive workshop to start the year with an outstanding group of media artists and podcast professionals, and explore how merging wonky research with real-life experiences can help to make concepts come alive!

While audio storytelling can often feel increasingly pressurized by the demands of an expanding industry, this workshop aims to help audio-makers navigate this world while also developing their own creative approach to the form.

Over the course of the workshop, Avery will lead the participants through both theoretical and practical aspects of podcasting, combining guest presentations, listening sessions, case studies and work-in-progress critiques. The workshop will look at how to convey information, how to do interviews, and how to get out there in the field with your microphone and make unusual, innovative work that’s grounded in facts.

Guest speakers will be on hand to help participants develop their audio practice. Shima Oliaee (Dolly Parton’s America) will discuss the nuts and bolts of hosting and editing. Martín Gonzalez (99% Invisible) will introduce participants to sound art, discussing varied approaches to recording and sound design. Najib Aminy (Reveal) will dive into creative approaches to production. On Sunday, Avery and filmmaker Matt Wolf (Spaceship Earth, Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell) will discuss why artists choose their medium and how to approach similar topics differently. We will be closing the workshop by addressing various strategies for distributing your podcast with Mitra Kaboli and Benjamin Riskin that will discuss as a case study their experience on the show Welcome to Providencetown.

Throughout the weekend, participants will also be given the space to present their podcast and work together with visiting guests.

This workshop is supported by Radiotopia.

Radiotopia from PRX is a curated network of extraordinary, cutting-edge podcasts. Radiotopia empowers independent producers to do their best work, grow audience, and increase revenue. At its core, Radiotopia cultivates community — for both listeners and makers alike.

NOTE: This workshop will require in-person participation from all participants. Each participant must present proof of vaccination and a negative COVID test administered within 72 hours of the workshop’s start. Any and all questions, please reach out to raphaelle@uniondocs.org.

Details

Schedule

10:30a

First Workshop Session

12:30p

Lunch

2:00p

Second Workshop Session

4:00p

Wrap Up

Bios

Avery Trufelman is the host and creator of Articles Of Interest, a show about what we wear. When it premiered in 2018, Articles of Interest was named one of best podcasts of the year by the BBC, LAist, New York Magazine, and the New Yorker, among many others. Previously Avery worked for New York Magazine, where she hosted The Cut’s podcast, as well as two seasons of Nice Try! from Curbed. Before that, Avery worked as staff producer for seven years on the design podcast 99% Invisible. She’s learning how to drive.

Shima Oliaee is the CEO and founder of Shirazad Productions. Her upcoming audio series will premiere at ESPN 30 for 30 on December 8, 2022. Shirazad will debut two new series in 2023.Shima created the 9-part series Dolly Parton’s America, which received a George Foster Peabody Award, an Edward R Murrow Award, a New York Festival of the Arts Award, along with several other national honors. Her audio doc The Flag and the Fury won a 2021 duPont-Columbia Award and Best in Show at the National Headliner Awards for best audio documentary. Her series UnErased was named the best podcast of the year by KQED News in 2018. After studying music and cinema-television at the University of Southern California, Shima received her graduate degree in psychology, worked as a teacher, translated for the UN, and worked in comedy television – including the Golden Globe winning Brooklyn Nine-Nine – before returning to her first love, audio. Most recently, Shima created and co-hosted  The Vanishing of Harry Pace for Radiolab, nominated for a Best Audio Documentary award by the IDA.

Najib Aminy is a producer for Reveal. Previously, he was an editor at Flipboard, and spent time reporting for newspapers such as Newsday and The Indianapolis Star back in the day. He launched the critically acclaimed indie podcast “Some Noise” which was featured by Apple and covered by The Guardian and The Paris Review. His work at Reveal has won awards including a Murrow and an IRE Gold Medal. He is Afghan-American, a lifelong New York Knicks fan, and a product of Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism. He also has a cat.

Martín Gonzalez is 99PI’s Senior Audio Engineer, based in Brooklyn and from Rhode Island via Argentina. Previously he worked at Pushkin Industries on their shows Broken Record, The Last Archive, Into the Zone, and Revisionist History. Before that, he was a studio & live sound engineer for lots of bands, including Calexico, Blitzen Trapper, Sharon Van Etten, and Julia Jacklin. He is a proud graduate of the Transom Story Workshop and a dropout of Berklee College of Music. In his spare time, he does paint-by-numbers and buys too many records.

Matt Wolf is a filmmaker in New York. His critically acclaimed and award-winning documentary films have played widely in festivals and have been distributed internationally in theaters and on television. Matt’s features include Wild Combination about the cult cellist and disco producer Arthur Russell, Teenage about early youth culture and the birth of teenagers, and Recorder about the activist Marion Stokes, who secretly recorded television 24 hours a day for 30 years. Matt’s most recent film Spaceship Earth is about Biosphere 2, a controversial experiment where 8 people lived quarantined inside a replica of the planet. The film premiered at Sundance, was released by Neon, and is now streaming on Hulu. Matt has made numerous short films about artists and queer history, including Bayard & Me on the civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who adopted his younger boyfriend in the early 1980s to obtain equal rights, and HBO’s It’s Me, Hilary about the Eloise illustrator Hilary Knight. Other shorts include, I Remember about the artist Joe Brainard, and The Face of AIDS for Time Magazine about a notorious 1992 Benetton advertisement. His most recent short Another Hayride is about the self-help guru Louise Hay, and was released by the New York Times’ Op-Docs and PBS’ POV series. Matt also directs commercials and content for brands. In addition to filmmaking, Matt organizes film screenings and public events, and he was the Co-Curator of Film for the 2019 Whitney Biennial. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Mitra Kaboli is an award-winning audio documentarian and multimedia artist who has been working professionally in radio and podcasting since 2012. Her work has been featured on The Heart, ESPN’s 30 for 30 and countless other outlets. Currently, she is the host and producer of the critically-acclaimed podcast Welcome to Provincetown.

Ben Riskin is a lawyer who quit his law firm job to produce podcasts and work on the business side of a burgeoning podcast industry. He has helmed business development and strategy for studios, networks and platforms, including developing and acquiring content, negotiating talent partnerships and structuring distribution regimes.  He is currently a Principal of Room Tone, and has previously worked with Endeavor Content, Megaphone, Panoply and Acast.