Audio is virtual reality. We close our eyes and disappear into different worlds, tinted by the colors dancing behind our eyelids. Our heartbeats match the rhythms of a story’s pace, with the wordless moments creating gestures for our minds to grasp upon. Audio storytelling has seen its popularity increase through the industrialization of podcasting. An industry slowly adapting work that upends traditional sonic practices. If you’re interested in the gaps between words, the non-extractive nature of collaborative documentary, and exploring ways to place a personal stamp on a story without using your voice––this workshop is for you. 

In Podcast School: Augmented Audio Realities, led by conceptual artist James T. Green (Senior Producer, Transmitter Media), we’ll spend six days building worlds for listeners to live in, writing rhythmically, and creating stories from perspectives other than yourself. Abstraction will be celebrated. Journeys will be encouraged. Formulas will not be lectured. Participants will explore left of center ways of thinking about craft, creating audio-first stories, interviewing, editing, mixing, script writing and enhancing the artistry of their work. If you’re interested in growth hacking your audience, the one true narrative structure, or finding a weird trick to be number one on Apple Podcasts, this workshop isn’t for you. Through guest presentations, listening sessions, discussions, daily group and individual exercises, case studies and work-in-progress critiques, Augmented Audio Realities will offer participants a broadened palette to bring to their storytelling canvas, no matter the genre.

An exceptional group of seasoned practitioners from the radio and podcast industry— public radio reporters, sound engineers, radio auteurs and editors, will help participants develop their audio practice and podcasting vision. Guest artists include Chiquita Paschal (Gimlet Media, BuzzFeed) and Cher Vincent (Vox, Who We Are) on approaching your stories as an editor, producer Adriene Lilly (WFMU: The Blind Tourist) will guide us through spatially awareness sound design, audio artist Ariana Martinez (BBC, Prism: The Tales of Your City) will speak to how one builds a world for listeners to immerse in, participants will learn how to incorporate collage as an audio art-form with audio producer Olivia Bradley-Skill (WFMU), reporter Sandhya Dirks (KQED, Race and equity) will discuss thinking beyond “the inconsequential quest” narrative, composer and sound designer Axel Kacoutié (The Guardian, Today in Focus) will examine  fighting the fear of rhythm and Shanida Scotland’s (Doc Society, The Guardian) session will focus on de-centering the self in stories.

AM: Presentation and discussion with Chiquita Paschal + Cher Vincent

PM: Presentation and discussion with Chiquita Paschal + Cher Vincent

AM: Presentation and discussion with Shanida Scotland

PM: Exercise with Lead Instructor + individual work-in-progress critique

11:00a

Warm up, inspiring references, case study, eye training.

11:45a

Discussion

12:30p

Share / Discussion / Exercise

1:00p

Lunch

2:00p

Presentation by guest speaker + individual work-in-progress critique

3:15p

Discussion

4:00p

Workshop Exercise + Critique + Individual work-in-progress critique

5:00p

Wrap Up

James T. Green is an audio documentarian by trade and an artist by practice. He’s from the flatlands of the Midwest but currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. His website is jamestgreen.com

Ariana Martinez is a multimedia artist and independent radio-maker interested in experimental media projects and in creating new physical and digital spaces for creative learning and community. Currently, Ariana’s curiosity points them toward questions of spatial navigation (real, virtual, and imagined), sensory integration (or lack thereof), and the potential for sympathetic relationships between humans and their (supposedly) inanimate counterparts. Ariana’s work has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Short Cuts, BBC Radio 3’s Between the Essays, and at Hearsay (Ireland), LUCIA Festival (Italy), and the Open City Documentary Festival (UK).

Adriene Lilly is a radio artist, sound designer and audio producer. She created The Blind Tourist on WFMU, maintains the public-access style Long Live the New Sound and has produced radio features that have aired on Earlid, Constellations, Re:Sound and others. She also works independently as an audio engineer.

Olivia Bradley-Skill’s show Radio Ravioli takes places every Monday afternoon on WFMU, the longest-running freeform radio station in the United States. Her immersive three-hour program combines music, improvised sound collage, live performance, and thoughtful conversation. She also serves as the station’s music director. Olivia’s work is grounded in sampling, cutting up of found footage, deep listening, subverting traditional storytelling, and the poetics of electronic sound.

Sandhya Dirks is the race and equity reporter at KQED public radio, where she focuses on long form documentary storytelling. She’s the creator and host of the podcast American Suburb and the editor of Truth Be Told podcast. Sandhya got her start covering presidential politics in the swing state of Iowa and her investigative reporting led to the resignation of San Diego’s mayor over charges of sexual abuse, long before #MeToo. She believes all stories are stories about power.

Axel Kacoutié is an award-winning sound designer and audio artist who’s been working with sound, music and words to challenge the familiar and revive the magic in the mundane. Most recently his work as received a Third Coast International Audio Festival Award (for ‘How To Remember’ in BBC Radio 4’s Short Cuts) and a Gold Award for sound design at last year’s Audio Production Awards. His work has featured on BBC Radio 3 & 4, Channel 4’s Random Acts, NOWNESS and at the Barbican Centre. He is also the Sound Designer and theme composer for the Guardian’s daily news podcast, Today in Focus.

Chiquita Paschal is an award-winning journalist and podcast editor who specializes in developing podcasts about art, culture and politics. Her production and editorial experience includes hard news, talk shows and highly-produced narrative storytelling. She is currently an editor at NPR’s Story Lab incubator and Mermaid Palace’s show The Heart, in addition to writing AUDIOCRAFT: The Art and Business of Making Podcasts that Mean Something (Routledge 2020). Previously,  Chiquita worked as a producer at Gimlet Media’s Uncivil, which won a Peabody in 2018. Before that she was a member of the “Pod Squad” at BuzzFeed where she contributed a variety of shows, including Another Round. Chiquita became skilled in the rigor of production by reporting daily segments across public media, from NPR’s Morning Edition to PRI’s The World. She began her career as an arts reporter in New Mexico. In addition to her focus on production, Chiquita has worked behind the scenes in leadership development roles throughout her career. She was nominated to serve as an NEA Media Arts grant panelist in the 2016 and 2017 cycles and was the founding Program Manager of PRX’s Podcast Garage, where she was also a coordinating judge for Radiotopia’s 2016 Podquest competition (which lead to the development of the Peabody- nominated show Ear Hustle). In 2013 she served as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Executive Fellow, where she developed original strategy, research and business models for the then-emerging podcast market. As a consultant and freelance editor, her recent past projects include Malcolm Gladwell’s Broken Record from Pushkin Industries, Essence’s celebrity pop culture interview podcast Yes Girl, and a variety of politically engaging shows by women and people of color like Democracy in Color with Aimee Allison, Bad with Money with Gabby Dunn, and Hysteria from Crooked Media.  She has also helped to develop independent shows about art and culture such as The Witch Wave and her own pilot about the creative process called Spark!

Cher Vincent  is an audio producer based in Chicago. She is currently Lead Audio Producer for One Illinois, a nonprofit news outlet, covering statewide news and producing two podcasts, Best People and In the Milkweeds. She is a co-founder of Postloudness, a podcast collective of audio shows by people of color, women, and queer-identified hosts that started in 2016. She was a 2017 Third Coast Radio Resident and has contributed stories to Gimlet Media, MTV News, BuzzFeed, Spotify, and NPR, and most recently executive produced an audio documentary on the life of Margaret T. Burroughs, founder of Chicago’s DuSable Museum, for the Terra Foundation.

Shanida Scotland is an award-winning commissioning editor and executive producer, working within documentary film, podcasts and audio. Her work spans Asst. Multimedia Editor at The Guardian. Prior, Shanida was part of the BBC STORYVILLE team. Shanida developed and produces AFTERWORDS, an audio series that puts the ideas of great writers in dialogue with contemporary writers, academics and activists, for Falling Tree Productions and BBC Radio 4.