*Tickets include lunch

A day long workshop that covers some of the basic production skills that can help you create high quality original content for your podcast that will make you stand out in the crowd. Deborah Dudgeon and David Prest, of award winning audio producers, Whistledown, will dissect what makes a successful podcast, how to plan it and put it together, and explain some of the simple marketing tools that can ensure your podcast reaches its audience.

Over the course of the day you will:

– listen to some great podcasts and work out what makes them successful, as well as what doesn’t work so well
– script an introduction to your own podcast
– learn how to plan your podcast, work out a format and running order
– get advice on selecting the right presenter(s) and guests
– experiment with microphone use and how to capture good quality sound
– understand rights issues and financing
– learn how to reach your audience
– and ultimately make your own 5-minute podcast to take home.

About the trainers:

David Prest and Deborah Dudgeon of Whistledown Productions will teach the course. Whistledown is the largest provider of speech programmes to BBC Radio, providing landmark series such as Radio 4’s The Reunion, and Feedback, as well as a wide range of features and documentaries. Whistledown also works with universities and commercial clients to make podcasts and audio guides.

Image: via Shutterstock / MAFord

Radio and other audio platforms offer a large and varied market for aspiring dramatists – from character drama to thrillers, comedy, sci-fi and historical stories. And in the age of the box-set, when TV drama is all about long-running series, audio is now the home of the single drama. This creates a huge opportunity for new drama writers to pursue unusual and ambitious projects with a realistic hope that they will be produced.

Are you interested in learning how to write audio drama for the BBC and elsewhere? This one-day workshop focuses on the special demands of writing drama for the ear. It aims to equip participants with the skills necessary both to write their own new projects and to pursue the possibility of working on existing radio drama series. The workshop will demonstrate how to use sound to grab the audience’s attention from the very beginning of a story. You will learn devices that help to differentiate between characters, and to establish their relationship to each other – hugely important in audio drama where the audience only have voices and effects to go on. And you will explore ways to create an atmosphere of suspense, where the test of each scene is – does the audience care what happens next? The workshop will also tell you how to structure and present your radio drama scripts, and how to go about pitching stories to commissioners and producers, both at the BBC and in newer markets such as Audible.

The workshop is led by Hugh Costello, who has written more than two dozen dramas for BBC Radio, and has twice been a judge in the drama category of the Audio Production Awards. Hugh is also a screenwriter whose HBO film Bernard and Doris was nominated for ten Emmy awards, including best screenplay. He also writes journalism and produces factual radio programmes.

So when Hersh published a controversial essay presenting a counter-narrative to the US government’s account of the killing of Osama Bin Laden readers around the world paid attention.

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