In depth with a local podcaster

As you will have seen earlier on in my posts, I featured The Hackney Podcast – a local project that aims to explore the area and its inhabitants through sound, poetry and the local people themselves.  Well, I was so taken with the podcast that it seemed a good idea to learn more about the inner-workings from creator and director Francesca Panetta.

Francesca’s been working on the project for nearly three years now and takes themes such as night, water or walking to relate her audience to her local area.  As she says herself, “if I’m telling a local community story, I have a global listener in mind and I use Hackney as a case study for larger themes”.

In her life outside of the Hackney Podcast, Francesca has worked in radio production as well as being in charge of podcasts and audio productions at Guardian.co.uk.  It’s in this heavily audio-centric career that Francesca has developed a strong understanding of how the power of sound, music and voices can be harnessed:

 ”I’m a big advocate of audio.  I think that sound is very powerful and very evocative – it can almost speak to you more directly than if you see the pictures. It’s an extremely cheap and easy way to make programmes, all you need is a machine and a microphone and you can go and talk to anyone”.

So if you want to know more about how localised podcasting can succeed, just click on the play button below to listen to the extended interview with Francesca.