5 things I learnt at the International Women’s Podcast Festival
This past Saturday, I had the pleasure of attending the International Women’s Podcast Festival, hosted by Content is Queen, at King’s Place. It was wonderfully friendly, welcoming festival, with varied talks and a great range of women present. I came away excited and inspired to work with more women in the future. Here are my takeaways -
A note on diversity - I was pleased to see that the speakers and audience at this festival were, as I predicted in my last article, drawn from much more diverse backgrounds than the Podcast Show. There were still uncomfortable moments though, where intersectionality was ignored, or questions from black and brown attendees cheerfully dismissed by white panellists. As a white, middle class, straight woman I’m aware that we can always do better.
Think beyond the pod
From the book stall to the keynote address, I was reminded that a podcast has the potential to reach new audiences in new forms. Rosie Wilby and Alice Lloyd both emphasized the importance of finding a new angle for your podcast material, so that the book’s market overlaps with your current audience and broadens your appeal. It strikes me that the same goes for video content, courses and even merch. While selling an alternative item to your existing audience has some benefit, expanding your audience with new formats goes even further.
Learn from the best
As a Radio 4 fan of old, one of the highlights of the day was listening to Mai Davies share her experience and wisdom on interview technique. Her tip to rephrase a ‘why’ question into something less confrontational to draw out your interviewee, has really stayed with me.
But hearing her speak also made me think of all the other women with great wisdom and experience we can draw on when creating great podcasts. Mai mentors and runs courses for organisations, and I’ll be researching who else offers similar opportunities soon.Reach out and share
In between sessions, the organisers had scheduled 45 minute breaks, which were an excellent opportunity to speak to panellists, and other attendees who had asked insightful questions. I spoke to so many interesting women, working on exciting podcast projects, and young women just joining the industry. One of our clients, Sarah Rees even travelled down from Manchester to meet Suze and I!
The session on Getting Press, was a lesson in reaching out to share your projects. Both Miranda Sawyer of the Observer, and Francesca Turauskis from Podbible, encouraged creators to email them with details of upcoming releases or new series. I’ll be writing a new article summarising what they want to receive in the coming days.
I’m always happy to speak to new podcasters, if I can share any tips and advice. Feel free to use the contact form on this site, if you’d like to chat.We need to turn our podcasts green
As the editor of Sustainable(ish) podcast, I was excited to see a session on Podcasting to Combat Climate Change. After the panel, which centred mostly on ways to make science communication accessible and engaging, I asked the panellists what they were doing to reduce the environmental impact of their shows. This is an area that I think all productions should consider, but particularly those with an environmental bent. Digital storage does have an environmental impact, which we should all be mindful of - it’s easy to think of files stored on the cloud as magically taken care of. We should all be reviewing what we store and how, periodically, and there might be a case for offsetting impacts in other ways too.
The money is out there
Too often discussions about podcast financing revolve around advertising, Patreon and corportate sponsorship, but several speakers, including the keynote speaker, Leanne Alie, talked about other revenue streams for podcasting. In a growing industry, sources of funding can be harder to find, but they can include arts funding, local grants, live events, and partnerships and collaboration. Particularly where your podcast’s content has a social purpose, these can be a valuable source of support.
