Nina Robinson reflects on Birmingham Podcast Festival

The first ever Birmingham Podcast Festival took place on 22nd April at the University of Birmingham’s Curzon Building. With workshops on such aspects as community building and sound equipment, panels and talks from key podcasters, it was a great mixture of different aspects of the podcast industry.

Festival organiser Nina Robinson sent us over a few words on her own Festival experience:

“I’m genuinely overwhelmed at the response to the Podcast Festival, so many people who I don’t know have been emailing and contacting me to say how useful they found the day and that it was really valuable and inspiring. For me there were so many highlights, you can watch the opener recorded by Hamza Syed of the Trojan Horse Affair Podcast here and the keynote speech by Sangeeta Pillai here.

Hamza Syed from the Serial Productions show The Trojan Horse Affair phoned in from New York

The decolonising podcasting conversation was a real eye-opener and I think it’s a conversation that is ground-breaking and important as the panellists gathered, brought their own unique and immensely insightful observations about what is going on in terms of power structures and dynamics which fit the same old colonial models designed to keep large sections of people OUT. Marcus Ryder MBE, Jade Benn from Stormzy’s Merky Books and Shelina Janmohamed whose news & current affairs podcast The Shelina Show on GlobalPlayer is brilliant.

Thanks to all those who took part – special mention to workshop leads Lisa Hack, Roifield Brown and Ninna Makrinov and the crew – the video team, Dylan Hayward, the PodFest ambassadors and our brilliant audio wizard who ensured everything ran super smooth, Pete Crowther. Hopefully see you all next year!”