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Empowering young people through audio production
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If you want to grow a particular type of apple tree, a gala apple, let’s say – then you have to deliberately graft a gala apple tree onto the new sapling. If you don’t do that, then any kind of tree will grow.
This is the allegory used by WADUP, a platform that supports young people to make their own audio stories. Except WADUP does the opposite of apple-grafting: they deliberately refuse to ‘graft’ a certain style or format onto a budding producer. Instead, they let the young person grow into whatever kind of producer they want.
The first season of WADUP’s podcast was co-produced by teens from Romania, Israel, the UK and the United Arab Emirates, covering everything from getting conscripted into the army at 18 to what it means to be queer. The second season, Stories of Connection, is out now.
I spoke to Irit Pollak and her team at WADUP to hear about their collaborative production process, what they to do build trust, how they deal with ghosting, and why they focus on learning instead of perfectionism.
What was the impetus behind launching WADUP?
Irit: WADUP is a storytelling platform run by young people and creative producers. We make audio stories with young people around the world so that they can speak for themselves.
Every WADUP producer is matched with an experienced story coach who supports them through the process of writing, recording and editing the story they want to tell. Right now WADUP is co-directed by myself, Laura Brierely Newton and Ekram Esmael.
The idea for WADUP came together in 2017. I’d moved to the UK from Australia to work at an internet rights charity and we were doing a lot of thinking about all that’s wrong with the internet and how we can make it fairer. One of the things that occurred to me was, if over half the world is online and phones are now pretty much backpocket recording studios then what’s stopping us democratising who gets to make stories?
At the same time I began meeting some pretty great teenagers whose voices were largely absent from podcasting at the time. Through making a podcast called Private Parts, I met Iman and Zoe, Palestinian and Israeli young women who’d become friends through dm’ing on Instagram. Then through volunteering at Refugee Youth in London I got to know Ekram and Yousef whose drive and intelligence made me think, why not start an audio storytelling platform with young people? So I asked Ekram and Yousef if they were interested in starting WADUP with me and they said yes.
Tell us about your production process.
Laura: The production began with a few weeks of activities for our producers that would help them become acquainted with the process of creating an audio story - script writing, interviewing, thinking about sound and editing. It also helped them get to know each other and get to know the story coaches, and to become comfortable with sharing feedback with each other.
As with season one, we also created a ‘story cell’. A story cell is a chat group on Signal, where all the producers can stay in touch, share their audio tasks during the first few weeks, and then continue to meet for a bi-weekly social facilitated by Ekram.
At the end of that process each producer is assigned a story coach, who works with them throughout the process. From there the producer and story coach meet weekly and begin to shape the producer’s original idea into something that would work for audio, talking through who they might need to interview, what sounds they might need to record.
The producers then write a script, with their story coaches offering advice and notes throughout the process, and begin gathering audio - interviews, location recordings, narration etc.
During the production stage we held online feedback workshops, with each producer assigned another person’s story to listen to and then write down their feedback, which they then shared during the workshop sessions. This helped to work as a deadline of sorts for producers, ensuring they were all running to the production schedule. It also allowed producers the opportunity to work on their giving and receiving feedback skills.
To help producers find their voices as they started writing their scripts, we organised a storytelling workshop with oral storytelling expert, Hannah McDowall. During the three-hour session Hannah took the producers through oral storytelling exercises to help them find a balance between their writing and talking style.
The final stage is editing. Each producer assembled their audio using the editing software Reaper. They then went through the stages of editing their interviews, recording their own narration, finding music and any sound effects and then finally, editing it all together.
(There’s a detailed look at WADUP’s production process here).
What role do the story coaches play?
Laura: At the start of production each producer is assigned a story coach. They work with the producers from start to finish, offering feedback and making suggestions to the producers original idea, script and initial edit drafts. Each of our story coaches brought with them their own unique expertise in journalism and storytelling.
Our producers generally have no background knowledge in making audio stories, so there’s a lot for them to learn. Of course Irit and myself are always available during the production process, but juggling every producer together during season one proved time consuming. So for season two we wanted to make sure our producers would have someone with enough time to speak with them weekly, and message with during the week when they had questions about how to do something, or hit roadblocks.
It was really awesome to watch the close relationships the producers and story coaches formed, and how much the story coaches cared about making sure their producer created the best story they could.
Our story coaches are Belinda Naylor, Miranda Dixon, Lisa Taylor, Kalson Abdi (shadowing), Irit Pollak and Laura Brierley Newton.
How do you choose story coaches to work with?
EE: We choose story coaches through a set of interviews. The first interview is with Laura or Irit then we proceed to an interview with myself. In the interview, we do have scenarios that we go through to filter how the story coach is building connections with a possible young person and their overall approach. Afterwards, it’s having a conversation of what worked and what didn’t between us. The overall quality doesn’t even have to be audio skills, but rather being interested in working with young people and helping them to tell their story.
Break down the apple analogy for us.
Laura: The apple tree analogy is basically a way to say we try really hard to never tell a producer what to do. We will always try to offer our advice, but even then we offer that carefully.
We have noticed that when you’re working with a young person in an area they don’t have a lot of experience in, they will often alter their idea to fit your suggestion - of course this isn’t always the case. And it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with age. I’ve done it myself before in the past when I wasn’t sure of myself, you assume the person with way more experience knows what they’re talking about. But sometimes those years of experience can mean someone's ideas follow the formula that many podcasts follow these days. But we really wanted our producers to think as outside the box as possible.
And so we tried really hard to never ‘graft’ our ideas onto the producers' stories. Instead we listened, offered advice when asked for it, but always focused on the producer's idea and allowed that to grow.
What are some of the more challenging elements of training young folks in audio production?
Irit: In our first season we experienced a fair amount of ‘ghosting’ – which basically means when someone stops communicating. This happened when a producer changed their mind about an idea, a big life thing happened which meant they couldn’t continue or they just didn’t have time to complete a weekly production goal.
We figured that for a lot of our producers, WADUP is a pretty new working dynamic which is based on trust and mutual responsibility. It’s completely different to a teacher-student relationship where you get in trouble if you haven’t done your homework.
So, in our second season we tested out a few strategies to build stronger relationships so that producers would communicate instead of ghosting whenever they hit a bump in the road. The first month of the programme focused on building trust. We did ‘manuals of me’, three weeks of experimental recording and editing activities to emphasise learning instead of perfectionism and we baked in peer-to-peer feedback sessions so producers could see how everyone’s stories go through a messy process of refinement.
Why is it so important that young people are enabled to tell their own stories?
Irit: It’s more of a question of which young people and how their stories are told. Through working with young people from Somalia, India, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Scotland, Romania and hopefully many more we’re trying to amplify alternative narratives about these places and the people who are inheriting them.
When we asked one of the first producers we worked with why she signed up to WADUP, she said: “because people are always talking about us [young people] but we rarely get to speak for ourselves”. This might seem like an odd thing to say – everyone’s sharing their stories on social media right? But we’ve found working slowly, and purposefully on narrative storytelling is a way for young people to drown out the noise and focus on something that really matters to them.
Ekram: Generally, the audience is anyone interested in hearing stories about what young people are up to, especially understanding how they are approaching things such as discovering one’s identity, dealing with recovery and creating sustainable change within communities. At the same time, it’s for those who are interested in hearing what working with young people is in both a remote mentoring aspect but also co-leadership role.
How have the producers reacted to having their stories out there in the world?
The producers have been really excited and proud of their stories.
Madhav, New Delhi, India: After months of recording, editing, and re-editing, it was an incredible feeling to see our story out there. WADUP was a unique opportunity for me to interact with some amazing changemakers and together reflect on our experiences around social entrepreneurship and activism from a very different perspective.
Mollie, Coventry, England: I am very proud to have my story out in the world because it's not just mine but my interviewees as well who let their guard down to speak to me.
Yasmin, Mogadishu, Somalia: It was so surreal after a very hard work for six months that my episode is literally out there and it is on Spotify ! A lot of people really loved it. I loved how people connected with me, saying we’re going through the same thing that you’re going through, or I really like your honesty and vulnerability and so on. The fact that people from every single country can listen to my episode… I’m grateful and I’m humble for that.
Maryam, Erbil, Kurdistan: I was always stressed about "what the others will think when they hear my story?" And by the "others" I particularly refer to the Kurds as what I have shared was related to their set of experiences and history. However, at some point and through the help of some of my friends, including the Kurds, I felt the need to talk about my story and share it as I realized that my story is as important as any other story. I learned that the stories that played a role in changing our lives are important to be shared as these stories could inspire people to overcome the challenges they have in their lives as they did to me. I’m exceptionally happy to see the episode heard by the public as this step, having it shared with the world, helped me overcome the challenges that I had with myself of not being able to talk about my story, share how I view the world, and stand for myself. I want to express gratitude toward WADUP and my coach, Miranda Dixon, for assisting me in communicating my story to the world in the most ideal way.
What has been a particular highlight or proud moment?
Ekram: I would say really being able to connect with the producers through the games we’d played. The majority of games we played were about building storytelling skills and pairing producers to share issues and peer feedback which worked great to help build connections but also for producers to apply what they’ve learned throughout or from story coaches.
What have the young producers taught you?
Ekram: That young people are truly out there making a difference and that there’s a passion that is often overlooked. Some people may think young people are just having fun, but when given platforms and support, there’s real under-the surface action and conversations taking place specifically about mental health, friendship, and climate change.
You can follow WADUP here.
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What I’m listening to
Sharp, engaging writing in this star-studded retelling of how they made Don’t Look Up.
Beautifully paced podcast from Helena de Groot. Particularly enjoyed this interview with poet Raymond Antrobus.
Finally gave Storytime with Seth Rogan a go. This episode missed the mark a little for me but the format is intriguing.
Thanks for reading folks. As always, send any tips, comments, concerns via email or Twitter — and share with a friend!