May 15, 2026 at 10:00 am – May 17, 2026 at 1:30 pm
Beyond the Feed:
Expanding the Art of Audio Non-Fiction
With Mitra Kaboli, Aaron Edwards, Viv Corringham & Gelsey Bell
After a period of commercial growth and seemingly endless interest and investment, the last few years of the podcasting industry has seen a decline in opportunities for creators new and old. What could be seen as an industry in contraction can alternatively be thought of as an opportunity for artistic evolution. Join award winning podcast producer and documentary artist Mitra Kaboli for this 3-day workshop, as she explores the new horizons of the contemporary audio documentary landscape.
Alongside a select group of esteemed guests, Mitra will guide participants through a world of sonic exploration, in which audio work is conceived and considered within an expansive artistic framework. Elevated beyond its commercial value and leaving behind the podcast feed, this workshop takes the audio documentary form and reaches for new possibilities in research, format, performance and distribution. We’ll be rifling through the rich lineage of podcasting and sound-based storytelling through sound to investigate what forms of audio presentation are available to sound artists and audio producers in the current landscape.
This workshop is intended to provoke out-of-the-box thinking, inspire creativity and encourage an expansive approach to the potentials of audio techniques. Through a variety of hands-on activities, artist talks and deep listening exercises, we’ll be diving into questions like: what is the state of the podcasting industry and where can we go from here? How can we share and uplift our work beyond the podcast feed? What tools, techniques and networks are available to sound artists and audio documentarians? What makes a story told through sound so compelling?
The workshop centers emerging and established artists from the intersecting worlds of sound art, audio documentary and the podcasting industry, and we’re lucky to be joined and guided by a few of them. Mitra Kaboli will be taking the lead, guiding us over the bridge between our familiar podcast feed and the ever-expanding possibilities of sound-based documentary. Interdisciplinary artist Aaron Edwards will discuss multi-modal performance and field recording practices. Viv Corringham, one of the foremost practitioners of the soundwalk, will walk participants through her practice and the ideas that guide it. Composer, vocalist and performance artist Gelsey Bell will share expert insight from years of research into vast artistic applications of the voice. Participants will also get the opportunity to share their own work in the context of a group discussion and feedback session, hopefully leaving the weekend with tangible learnings and productive advice.
Details
Open to everyone, though the workshop setting is best suited for filmmakers, film producers, journalists, curators and media artists.
Give us an idea of who you are and why you are coming. When you register you will be asked for a short statement of interest that should briefly describe your experience and a film project (it would be great if you have a project in progress that you would present to the group during the work-in-progress critique sessions), plus a bio. There’s a spot for a link to a work sample (and CV, which would also be nice, but is not required).
$295 early bird registration ends on May 5, 2026.
$350 regular registration.
The deposit is non-refundable. Should you need to cancel, you’ll receive half of your registration fee back until May 5. After May 5, the fee is non-refundable.
No animation software is required for participation in this workshop.
In order to keep costs down, this workshop is a BYOL, i.e. bring your own laptop. Students must be fully proficient using and operating their computers.
To register for a workshop, students must pay in full via card, check, or cash . After the early bird registration deadline of May 5, course fees are not refundable or transferable and any withdrawals or deadlines will result in the full cost of the class being forfeit. There will be no exceptions. To withdraw from a course please email info-at-uniondocs.org.
In the event that a workshop does not receive sufficient enrollment, it may be canceled. Students will be notified at least 48 hours prior to the start of a cancelled workshop and will be refunded within 5 business days. If we reschedule a workshop to another date, students are also entitled to a full refund. UnionDocs reserves the right to change instructors without prior notification, and to change class location and meeting times by up to an hour with 48 hours prior notice.
Please note: Participants are accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Schedule
Friday, May 15th
10:00am – 10:30am Welcome & intros
10:30am – 12:30pm Intro session with Mitra Kaboli
12:30am – 2:00pm Lunch
2:00pm – 4:00pm Session with Aaron Edwards
4:00pm – 4:30pm Wrap Up Discussion with Mitra additional exercises / discussion
Saturday, May 16th
10:00am – 10:30am Warm up, inspiring references, case studies
10:30am – 12:30pm Session with Viv Corringham
12:30am – 2:00pm Lunch
2:00pm – 4:00pm Session with Gelsey Bell
4:00pm – 4:30pm Wrap Up Discussion with Mitra, additional exercises / discussion
Sunday, May 17th
10:00am – 10:30am Warm up, inspiring references, case study, ear training.
10:30am – 12:30pm Creative session OR work-in-progress with Mitra
12:30pm – 1:30pm Wrap Up Discussion with Mitra, additional exercises / discussion
Each day follows this general structure, with some minor variations and substitutions:
Warm up, inspiring references, case study, eye training.
Presentation by guest speaker + individual work-in-progress critique
Share / Discussion / Exercise
Presentation by guest speaker + individual work-in-progress critique
Workshop Exercise + Critique
Mitra Kaboli is an award-winning audio producer, sound designer, and multimedia artist working professionally in radio and podcasting since 2012. Mitra was one of the original members of the Peabody Finalist podcast, The Heart. Her work has been featured on ESPN’s 30 for 30 Podcasts, the BBC, Making Contact and NY Mag’s Tabloid. In 2022, she hosted and produced the critically acclaimed podcast, Welcome to Provincetown. Currently, Mitra is an adjunct professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and at Hunter College.
Aaron Edwards is an interdisciplinary director, story editor and writer working across text, stage and narrative audio. His writing, podcasting and performance work has appeared at places like BAM, Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Public Library and the Tribeca Festival. He’s based in the Hudson Valley.
Viv Corringham (voice, electronics, field recordings) is a US based British vocalist and sound artist, who has been described as “a vital force in improvised music since the late 1970s” (Corey Mwamba, BBC Radio 3) and “a vocalist of stunning virtuosity” (Louise Gray, The Wire). She makes concerts, soundwalks, workshops and installations. Her practice explores relations between voice, place and walking, responding with sung improvisations to both natural and urban soundscapes. Corringham has received international recognition and awards including two McKnight Composer Fellowships through the American Composers Forum. She is a certified facilitator of Deep Listening, having played and studied with composer Pauline Oliveros. In 2024 this practice took her to Mexico, Spain, Germany and the Listening Academy in Hong Kong. Notable live performances have occurred in festivals at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Fonoteca Nacional de Mexico, Issue Project Room New York and Tempo Reale Florence. Her recent album “Soundwalkscapes” (Vol. 1: January to June) on Flaming Pines label (Bandcamp’s Best Field Recordings 2024) has been well received. The Wire wrote that “Corringham voices the depth of place.” Her definitive contribution to sound art practice is the 20 year ongoing “Shadow-walks”, which create layers of time and space, combining recordings from shared and solo walks along the same path with her improvised sung response. They have occurred in 18 countries, are taught in many sound art classes and have been the focus of articles in books and publications.
Gelsey Bell (she/they) is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary performance creator, composer, and vocalist. Her recent works include the experimental opera mɔɹnɪŋ [morning//mourning] (2023), commissioned by the HERE Arts Center and presented in the Prototype Festival; Cairns (2020), a soundwalk for Green-Wood Cemetery; the musical one-act Archaeopteris (2025), commissioned by Wet Ink; and thingNY’s collaboratively written opera Mouthful (2024). She is the Co-Artistic Director of thingNY and Varispeed. She has released multiple albums, including the recent mɔɹnɪŋ [morning//mourning], Skylighght, and Heads Together. She has received awards from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Opera America, the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, the Japan Foundation, NYSCA, and others. Performance highlights also include Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway) and Ghost Quartet, Robert Ashley’s Celestial Excursions and Improvement, Darius Jones’s Samesoul Maker, and others. She has a PhD in performance studies from NYU, is part-time faculty and the program director for the Master of Music Performer-Composer program at the New School, and has published articles in TDR/The Drama Review (for which she is a Contributing Editor), The Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies (for which she is an Associate Editor), Tempo, Performance Research, and others.
