Co-production in audio storytelling: the WADUP Process explained
WADUP is a storytelling platform run by young people and creative producers, working remotely with teens across the globe to produce their own podcast episodes and encourage other teens to speak about what matters to them.
The first season of WADUP’s podcast has been co-produced by teens from Romania, Israel, the UK and the United Arab Emirates, using their phones to record people and sounds, covering issues from getting conscripted into the army at 18 to the temptations of the middle aisle at Aldi.
Each producer went from having never made a radio story before in their lives, to recording interviews and background sounds, learning how to speak with people they may never have had contact with, listening and asking questions. Working alongside WADUP story coaches, producers scripted and developed stories that say something about them and their world.
WADUP’s goal was, and continues to be, to create a space for young people to share unfiltered stories. Whether it be their own, their friends, or something they’d learnt about and wanted to explore further. WADUP is about making their voices the focus of the podcast. And to honour that , we — Irit and Laura — remained out of the way. Instead, we helped WADUP producers and team members to become storytellers in their own right. We used the experience and knowledge we had gained throughout our own working years to teach and equip each producer with the network, ability and belief in themselves, so if they wished they could go on to continue to tell stories.
Some of our listeners have asked us to share more about how we make WADUP. If you haven’t listened already you can find season one on iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
How do we co-produce audio stories with young people?
- We assembled a cross-generational team to run WADUP
We made sure WADUP was led by young people from day one by setting up a cross-generational team in 2018 including Ekram Esmael, Yousef Esa and Zoe Yatziv who were 18 and 17 at the time. We also invited Alex Mecklenburg, a leadership and change coach with over 20 years experience in executive level roles in the creative industries to be our advisor. Laura Brierley Newton has an audio, film and journalism background, having worked for the ABC in Australia and Irit has background storytelling, responsible technology and social design, having worked for Deloitte Australia, Doteveryone and Barnardo’s as well as founding the Private Parts podcast in 2015. In WADUP season one we were also joined by storycoach Iacob Bacian.
We had bi-weekly core-team planning meetings, with members videoing in from Romania and Israel, where we set out WADUP’s working principles and goals, decided how we’d develop our brand and co-produce our theme song, planned out our production schedule and how to use social media meaningfully. Alex also hosted a blended face-to-face/remote residential in the UK which we plan to run for each season.
- We introduced the role of a remote story coach to work 1–2–1 with producers
So much of what WADUP producers experience working with us is a first; the first time they’re working with audio, the first time they’re authoring their own stories, [pre-COVID] the first time they’re working with an entirely remote team from other countries, the first time people are really listening to what they have to say…and this can become overwhelming. In season 01 we found that some producers put a lot of pressure on themselves to produce deeply personal, social justice-related stories that for some, understandably, became too much to follow through with. We also found that producers may start with one story they want to tell and through the process of trying to tell that story pivot to a completely different one. An experienced audio storyteller will know that these scenarios are normal, albeit painful, parts of the production process, however for first time remote producers this may feel like failure and can lead to ghosting or avoidance.
To make producing podcasts remotely with first time producers work, WADUP matches every producer with a storycoach. WADUP storycoaches are experienced audio storytellers who meet with WADUP producers for 6–9 months through weekly 1 hour video coaching sessions. Storycoaches follow a WADUP storycoaching programme and are supported by the core WADUP team. For season 01 the story coach roles were filled by Irit and Laura, as well as Iacob, who was recruited from Romania.
We’ll be recruiting story coaches for WADUP season 02 in September. Story coaches must be 25 years and above and can be based anywhere in the world. Sign up here.
3. We introduced WADUP storycells for peer-to-peer feedback and connection
One of the principals of WADUP is that we bridge people. This relates to how we tell stories but also to how we consider the experience of working with WADUP for producers. A WADUP storycell is created for WADUP producers in each season. It’s a group where current producers share audio experiments and story progress for peer-to-peer feedback and above all a place to know emerging audio storytellers with different cultures, religions, politics and more. Story coaches are also part of the group, providing an extra layer of support. Season 01’s WADUP storycell connected producers from Romania, the UK, Israel and the UAE.
4. We test and tweak as we go
We use a design-led process of testing and tweaking our methods as we go so that we can authentically co-produce stories with teens everywhere. Starting with the premise that most phones that can record audio today are good enough to make podcasts with, and that good stories are more important than perfect sounding audio, we focused on how teens, who are usually the early adopters of tech everywhere, can make compelling content with the most basic recording equipment.
At the very beginning we had planned to make each WADUP episode a compilation of audio stories from young people around themes like masculinity, identity politics and music. But when we listened back, the stories we had collected were…boring. This wasn’t the producer’s fault. The initial audio recordings were boring because they were out of context and hard to connect to. So we changed our format to become one producer per episode to give them the space to go deep on a specific story.
Another change we made was extending our timeline from 3 to 9 months to allow story coaches to build up meaningful remote relationships with producers to understand their worlds and perspectives. The longer production process also factors in building a remote peer-to-peer community for WADUP producers’, through WADUP story cells. It takes time for everyone to get to know each other to feel comfortable giving critical feedback to peers, trying things out and to learning that stories almost never end up the way we imagine them.
Making audio easy
An alternative to helicopter journalism
Recently, within the world of journalism and documentary making there has been a debate about the best way to tell a story and whether helicoptering into someone’s world, interviewing them and others involved, and then leaving to edit the story in whichever shape the journalist wishes it to be, is an honest way to tell a story. The big question we think everyone should consider before telling a story is this — is this your story to tell? Nine times out of ten the answer will likely be no. So we thought, instead of telling other people’s stories — which often leaves them feeling taken advantage of and badly represented — why not work with them and help them tell their own story?
Stories as apples
One analogy we came up with was an apple tree — if you want to grow a particular type of apple — say a pink lady — then you have to graft a pink lady apple tree onto the new tree sapling. If you don’t do this, then any type of apple will grow. WADUP refuses to graft a certain type of story or style onto a new producer, instead it focuses on allowing each ‘tree’ to grow whatever apple it wants. That means listening to producers and instead of telling them how to do something in a preconceived way, we ask them how they want to tell their story. And if they don’t want to tell a certain part of the story, or they don’t want it done in a certain way, we listen. Even if we think it could be ‘better’ or could make the story more ‘sellable’.
By guiding our producers through each step of the storytelling journey, we’re demystifying the process and empowering them to go on and continue to make stories, if they want to. Suddenly the idea of interviewing someone, recording ideas, editing a story together, it doesn’t seem impossible anymore. It no longer belongs in the ‘university educated only’ category.
So while we coached each of our producers through the process, questioning their ideas and prodding them to explain what it was they were trying to say, we always made sure they felt in control. In season 01 we did end up editing the stories, but throughout the process we sent each new edit back to our producers to ask, is this what you wanted? If they didn’t like something, we would get rid of it. In the future we’d love to help our producers to have a go at doing an initial edit, maybe even one day doing it all themselves from start to finish.
For all of these reasons we stayed out of the podcast, letting Ekram, a member of our core team, to be the voice guiding listeners through each episode. Like each producer, Ekram was new to the audio world and had never hosted before. Again, we began by demystifying how many podcast or radio show hosts prepare. We wrote up a simple base script in Google Docs that Ekram could edit and change as much as she wanted to. We explained that although many podcast or radio hosts sound conversational, many have just mastered how to write and read a script well. We also taught Ekram about the basics of prepping for interviews with producers — listening to each producer’s story carefully beforehand and preparing questions.
Ekram learnt quickly and at each episode begins with her introducing the episode, and ends with her interviewing the producer about their experiences producing the story, adding in her own experiences of the journey with them.
Want to get involved in WADUP Season 02?
We’re going to be recruiting WADUP teen producers and storycoaches this September. This season has the theme of Connections.
If you’re 16–21 find out more about becoming a WADUP producer here.
If you’re over 25 and have experience in audio storytelling, podcast or sound production find out more about becoming a WADUP story coach here.
Written by WADUP co-directors Laura Brierley Newton and Irit Pollak
