Creating a documentary podcast out of oral history

How can you make an oral history pop for the listener? In this session, we’ll talk through tangible techniques to tell a compelling story using archival tape and interviews with the people who were there.

Join Pippa Johnstone (creator of Expectant, TVO’s Word Bomb, and a show runner at Pacific Content) to hear how “With Dignity: the Story of Casey House” was made, a series documenting Canada’s first ever AIDS hospice.

This session will walk you through pitching a nonprofit partner, to interviewing guests about sensitive memories, to weaving in archival audio (AKA what to do when 10 hours of 90s drag footage gets airdropped into your laptop). We’ll talk about the overwhelming moment when you finish collecting tape and now you actually have to write the thing (?!), to the beauty of post-production and publishing a story that isn’t only yours to tell.