#GrabTheMIC Client Journey Interview

In this #GrabTheMIC client journey we speak to Grace Dyke, Strategic Director from Yellow Jigsaw. The community media specialists got MIC media in, to train their ‘Talking About My Generation’ over 55’s community reporters on all things podcasting.

We kick off by asking Grace about Yellow Jigsaw’s mission…

There is an embarrassing lack of representation in the mainstream media of people from all walks of life. So our mission at Yellow Jigsaw is to give people the skills, confidence, and platforms to be able to share their views and influence the world around them. Instead of waiting for mainstream media to listen to them.

Podcasting is a great way to empower the older community reporters that we work with to use their voices.

So where were you at before you got MIC involved?

We wanted to upskill our ‘Talking About My Generation‘, volunteer community reporters. There’s 16 of them and they’re all aged 50 and over. We wanted them to be confident in producing their own podcasts or at the very least learn how to listen to them! We didn’t have that skills and knowledge in-house.

So we needed a company that would make it a fun, friendly, and accessible concept for our community reporters. That was the motivation. We thought MIC Media would work well with them, personality-wise, as well as content and skills-wise.

We knew MIC could unlock this world of audio for our reporters, which otherwise would have remained closed to them.

I also think there’s something great about giving our reporters a chance to hear from people other than myself or my fellow co-founder Kirsty! We want to bring in new people from different backgrounds and experiences!

What was the group’s knowledge of podcasting like?

Before the workshop with MIC Media, our community reporters hadn’t even listened to a podcast before! So we were starting at a very, very basic level of awareness of what a podcast was.

In the space of 2. 5 hours, we moved from zero knowledge of podcasts, to some of our reporters feeling confident to find and listen to podcasts and even wanting to produce their own!

It was quite a feat and probably one we weren’t expecting!

Just to show them how to consume podcasts would have been a success, but to get them fired up to create their own was great! One of those is Bob, he’s now turned into our super podcaster. He’s just been spending three days trying to edit the most recent podcast episode!

It’s also been a great opportunity for the other reporters to build their confidence as interviewees. I think the medium of the podcast is where they’ve developed the most, it makes them feel like their views matter. It’s really confidence-boosting for them to hear themselves and to get feedback from people who have listened to the podcast. In fact, one of our reporters originally got involved because he’s a keen writer. But after being encouraged to be a podcast interviewee, and to share his views in that way, he’s then gone on to do other things like radio interviews. Before he would have said ‘No, that’s not for me, you don’t want me on that thing!’ It’s helped to grow his confidence.

Bob too, he was interested in the production side of things but shied away from being an interviewee. However, he’s provided some of the best content in that podcast that we’ve published to date. It’s been so great to see his confidence grow. He wasn’t even that engaged in the project until your workshop!

It’s been great from an accessibility point of view too. We’ve got one community reporter who’s registered blind, and so she’s limited to what she can create and limited when it comes to writing or interviewing people. Especially during lockdown. However, she contributed a fantastic podcast interview for our Get Moving episode. We made sure she was able to get involved using the handset that she is used to. It was really rewarding and satisfying to know that she was given that platform through our podcast.

Some of our reporters have been really honest about their mental health for example. Podcasting is a safe space to share, and that’s what relates and connects with the audience. Some of our reporters have been really honest about their mental health for example.

The feedback from funders has been great. They think it’s fantastic to get real people’s views in a way they wouldn’t normally get. It’s always better coming from the horse’s mouth isn’t it?

The value for us is we’re competing with the mainstream media. We don’t want to just be a nice little newsletter that a few older people have put together, we want it to be media that we can all be proud of. So having podcasting in that suite has helped. It’s also helped challenge the stereotypes of age because podcasts are not necessarily associated with the over-fifties.

What’s lovely is that it’s all come full circle. Bob held a zoom tutorial with the our interns, who are around 20 years old. He shared how he uses Audacity to edit the podcast. He’s a retired teacher so knowledge sharing is in his comfort zone, but podcasting certainly wasn’t up until a few months ago!

What was it like working with MIC?

I was impressed at how diligent you were. The processes that you had in place to make sure that we fulfilled our objectives was impressive. It gave a good first impression, it was like “yeah, they really care about this.” It set the precedent of the quality of the content that we were expecting to get.

I don’t think we’ve ever had an external trainer who has gone to the lengths that MIC did to make sure that it was tailored.

Some of the reporters have been in touch with you since the training too. I think that’s a testament to your rapport with the reporters – when you only met some of them once! That’s quite impressive. I’ve had workshops a year ago and I wouldn’t know who that trainer was or wouldn’t want to keep in touch with them. In the space of two hours, you moved from a trainer to a friend and someone that they feel like they could return to you! There’s something quite incredible about that rapport building. That and the tailoring shows that MIC cares.

“Podcasting is a really subtle, but effective way of pulling out the most honest chat that you can’t always get from either a standard interview. Your subjects will always be slightly on edge.

But we’ve had some really honest conversations, which are much more insightful and authentic than you’d find in a blog.”

What do you love about MIC?

MIC makes something, which for many people that we work with is an alien concept, achievable. You completely put them at ease. There’s no fear in terms of tech or it being beyond their ability. That’s down to MIC Media’s delivery. We value that and your expertise. It’s not something that Yellow Jigsaw could manage internally.

It’s also good to fall back on MIC. So we had the training, but then being able to go back to you and ask technical questions really helped. It’s helpful that we’ve got that MIC safety net! You also mixed and produced the first podcast, which is great too. It provided a professional template that we continue to work from for our podcast.

There are loads of organisations that will never feel like the world of podcasting is open to them. They’ll not believe it’s a platform that they can use to share their views and influence the world around them. MIC can introduce them to the world of podcasting and make it possible for them to make their own.

There will never, not be a need for MIC Media.

MIC Media has not only contributed to solving the problem we started out with, it’s just taken us to a level that we didn’t expect to get. We’ve got an older reporter now sharing his audio editing skills with the next generation of podcasters, our student interns. It’s such a success story. Thank-you.

We’d recommend MIC Media to any organisation that is looking to enter the world of podcasting.

Take a look at the Yellow Jigsaw Client Journey digest

Are you looking for podcast training for your beneficiaries, members, team or group? Contact MIC HERE, let’s have a chat about your workshops wants and ideas!