1 of 2
VCU professor and radio producer Chioke I’Anson will serve as director of community media at a podcast incubator at the school's Institute for Contemporary Art created in collaboration with VPM. (Photo by Amaya Zaslow courtesy VCU)
2 of 2
Professor l'Anson with VCU students at VPM (Photo courtesy VCU University Relations)
They were called “driveway moments.” That was when a compelling segment on NPR's long-running weekly show “This American Life" kept you listening in the car before switching it off.
Chioke I’Anson, professor of African American Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, uses this description when speaking about the kind of stories he’d like to hear generated from a partnership between VCU’s Institute for Contemporary Art and public media outlet VPM. A vision some two years in the formulation, however, involves radio’s latter-day media evolution: the podcast. A soft opening reveal will occur, as so many things do these days, through Zoom, Wednesday, Sept. 2, at 6 p.m.
The physical undertaking involves the refitting of the ICA’s second-floor breakout and conversation space, the Murry DePillars Learning Lab. During the ICA’s inaugural exhibition, “Declaration,” temporary recording stations for capturing personal stories were installed. The present evolution, slated for completion in spring 2021, is to receive designation as the VPM + ICA Community Media Center. In the meantime, the team will connect with those spurred by interest for the project and work on programming.
“I am a lover of audio,” I’Anson explains. In the early 2000s, the dominance of the internet hung a huge question mark over the future of radio. He wondered, “How long is radio even going to last? What happened was that podcasts happened and exploded.”
The ideas swirling around in l'Anson's head involved creativity, community and clarity. The best way to weave all these elements into one framework sounded to him like a forum of podcasting, with ideas brought in by those who likely don’t have either the resources or the knowledge about producing a podcast.
“A lot of us are accustomed to video,” I’Anson says. “When you take away an element that removes assumption, you create an added opportunity for empathy.” An additional level of critical perception is required these days, he says, comparing how the caption of a photograph may not tell the exact story of what you’re seeing. He gives podcast instructions and has made podcasts of his own. His podcast pilot, "Do Over," rose to the top 10 of Radiotopia’s Podquest competition and became part of NPR’s first Annual Story Lab. Where he might situate this podcast birthing center formed a central question.
One day in a meeting also attended by Dominic Willsdon, the ICA’s executive director, the subject arose. “And he told me,” l'Anson says, “ ‘I may have a place where you can do something like that,’ and I thought, Oh, yes, I know that place! That place is amazing! Let’s talk about that.”
Willsdon is also an associate professor of education, and he keyed in on the possibility for another element of media instruction. But, he, too, appreciates the value of audio.
“When Chioke was looking to see what form this could take and where it could be,” Willsdon relates, “it seemed be a more public-facing offering. And it would fit between the school and the city and different communities within it. This is exactly the threshold where the ICA sits.”
Willsdon considers the ICA a place of production. The ICA commissions artists. “Most of the work presented here was created from scratch. We can reach into the sphere of the energetic form of the audio podcast. Especially with a new form, it takes a while to see craft in that form. You have to be familiar enough with the form to talk about craft.” He adds that podcasts are a democratic medium. “It’s the audio equivalent of photography,” he says. “You have a camera, you can take a picture, but that doesn’t necessarily make you a photographer. This is a gateway medium into the fullness of creativity.”
VPM Chief Content Officer Steve Humble says that this opportunity to accentuate community connections offers exciting prospects. “It’s an opportunity for us to meet amazing creative people in this area.” He envisions a pitch contest or session with VCU from which podcasts can emerge. VPM is developing a podcast platform, and the center will also allow for an additional editing studio for VPM and PBS field reporters.
The versatility of the podcast is intriguing. “It does hearken back to original radio,” Humble says, “episodic storytelling and developing characters. The difference being, this isn’t appointment radio. You don’t have to be in your car. You can be working in your garden and listening with your earbuds. This has opened up a huge listening audience, especially in the past three, four years.”
This fall, I’Anson intends to begin with basic seminars about the various skills of production and special workshops featuring professional producers and a livestreaming special episode of a workshop-created podcast.
“You have some people recording in closets, their bathrooms, under the sheets with flashlights,” he says of the sometimes lo-fi podcast production values. “This is state of the art. It’s like nothing you’ve seen before.”
