Holywell Trust Conversations

“What’s a Podcast?”

I knew the answer, but still had to think carefully about how to answer. I was talking with a visitor to the Holywell building about what my organisation does, and just casually threw out the ‘P’ word in full confidence that it would be implicitly understood. “It’s sort of like a radio programme that you listen to whenever you want” was the best I could come up with, to my instant and enduring disappointment.

I was trying to explain our series of Podcasts, of which Holywell Trust Conversations is the latest. Our goal with the podcast is simple: to have fact-based conversations about current affairs in Northern Ireland. Conversations is hosted by our Director, Gerard Deane, and author Paul Gosling, who have developed a familiar style and working relationship over years of podcasting together.

Our Podcasts are expressions of our primary goal to be a thought-leader for the community. Two episodes spring to mind as illustrative examples of our approach: the very first Conversations episode, ‘Belfast Good Friday Agreement - An Explainer’ is in the first instance a fact-based overview on what the terms and provisions of the agreement are. We seek to highlight often forgotten nuances of our subjects, which is why we follow with an interview with Avila Kilmurray on the significant role of the Women’s Coalition in the agreement.

‘Trashing the Environment’ typifies our approach to current affairs, examining the illegal dumping at Mobuoy with first-hand testimony from Journalist Sam McBride, one of the leading early reporters on the scandal. We complement this with an interview with Dean Blackwood, expert and campaigner on environmental crime, framing the Mobuoy issue in the broader context of the regrettably lucrative environmental crime in our region.

The difference between a radio show and a podcast episode is this sense of familiarity, not just between the hosts, but with the listener. This is one way in which I was mistaken when trying to characterise a ‘Podcast’ as a kind of canned radio-show: we don’t often deliberately sit down to listen to radio, rather we encounter it out in the wild as background noise; Radio is a natively public medium. A Podcast is piped directly into our ears: we decide to let it into the private headspace of our lives, developing familiarity with the hosts, their style, and their thinking.

So, when listeners decide to play an episode of Holywell Trust Conversations, they are deciding to think critically about issues that matter to Northern Ireland, and we find the fact of this very encouraging.

Podcasting is a democratic medium. Where Radio is filtered by regulatory and journalistic layers (however necessary or valid these may be) Podcasting is self-publishable in a way that Radio is not. This presents an opportunity for an organisation like Holywell Trust to develop our own media platform, located as we are in a region physically and symbolically far from the centres of influence on these islands.