Even the founder of the Resonate podcast festival, Chioke I’Anson, was surprised when tickets to the upcoming event, only in its third year, sold out just hours after becoming available.
“It’s a weird situation because I thought we were going to be doing promotion [for the festival] for three months,” says I’Anson, who is also founding director of community media at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU and a prominent voice regularly heard on National Public Radio.
“But the festival selling out so quickly gives us the opportunity to ask the question: Why do so many people want to come to Richmond for this? Why is it such a huge thing?”
I’Anson proposes some answers to those questions in a piece he wrote in June for the public media website, Transom, titled “The future of podcasting is IRL.” In the article, he suggests that “[podcast] producers mostly come together for the intangible qualities of togetherness itself.”
But if you are a Richmond-based podcaster looking for togetherness and you didn’t snag tickets to Resonate, are you out of luck?
On the contrary, there are several ways local audiophiles are building and bolstering the local podcasting community and some of the efforts have been going on for years.
Mike Bickett started the Facebook group, RVA Community of Podcasters, back in 2016.
“When I started the group, it was only a handful of people,” he says. “Back then, people didn’t really think of podcasts as being produced in your own town. But then shows started coming out of the woodwork. There’s almost 300 people in the group now.”
Bickett is the founder of “Geeks Under the Influence,” a popular podcast that he expanded into a broader network of shows. “Coming from an entertainment background, doing stand-up and playing in bands, I knew how important it was to have local in-person opportunities to collaborate with other people,” he says.
He says the benefits of local contacts are myriad. “A lot of podcasters get moral support, which is important in this medium because there’s a steep learning curve,” Bickett says. “There is the opportunity to be a guest on each other’s shows, share insights, trade and sell equipment and also just having a community that you can lean on.”
Local audio engineer Steve Lack has been the nexus point for several connections between local podcasters. In cooperation with Meg Lindholm, the director of podcast production at VPM, Lack started an in-person meetup group and maintains a Slack channel for local podcasters [disclosure: VPM owns Style Weekly].
“When we started the meetup group, I found that people were really hungry to get back to talking to people in person,” says Lack, who is the engineer for VPM’s podcast, “RVA’s Got Issues,” that launched in May.
He also says that networking is essential in getting past a podcast’s startup phase. “Anyone can start a podcast: all you need is a phone and an idea,” he says. “But to get people to listen to it, that’s the next level. You have to have people you can talk to about reaching that next level.”
For some podcasters, that next level doesn’t mean building an audience as part of generating income. They’re focused on building community, not just among other podcasters but among Richmonders in general.
Dominic “Moral” Wall and Carl Joseph started their podcast, “Embrace Matters of Richmond,” during the period of social unrest after George Floyd’s murder. “People were falling out with each other, relationships were being lost,” remembers Wall. “I just remember thinking, ‘How do I bring people together?’”
Originally called “Embrace Matters of Race,” the podcast ultimately shifted. “As things calmed down, it was clear Richmond still had issues, but they weren’t just about race,” says Joseph. In conjunction with their podcast, about to launch a fifth season, Wall, Joseph and their producing partner, Gabriela Santana, are planning live events called “Embrace Space.” The first one was held last March.
“We really want to drive home that [the podcast] isn’t just about listening but about how we live it out in community,” says Wall. “Like, how do we actually pull people together, sit down in the same room, and provide a safe space for hard conversations and for people to share their perspectives.”
Through festivals like Resonate or events like Embrace Space, it’s clear that podcasts are expanding from a medium that lives just between your ears to one that brings people together out in the real world.
“Resonate” will be held at the Institute for Contemporary Art Oct. 25 and 26. Tickets are sold out. More information is available at https://www.resonatepodfest.com/.
