We created and produced a podcast series for RADEQUAL, Manchester City Council’s counter-extremism campaign. It has been listened to more than 10,000 times.
The challenge
RADEQUAL is Manchester City Council’s campaign to engage communities in honest and often difficult conversations, addressing the factors that draw people towards extremism before they take hold. Campaigns in this space usually speak about communities rather than letting communities speak, which is precisely why so many of them fail to land. The Council needed something people would choose to listen to, made by a team that understood both the subject and the audience. They came to us to build it.
Our approach
We developed In My Own Words, a podcast series hosted by Common Sense contributor Pryanka Shergill, and handled it end to end, from the original concept through to production and release. The premise sits in the title. Guests from across Manchester tell their stories without tailoring them to anyone’s agenda, which lets listeners work out the nuances for themselves rather than being handed a conclusion. Episodes range from terrorism and extremism to the stereotyping of young black boys, and one conversation might be heavy while the next is a funny story about an embarrassing memory. That range is the whole design, because it treats guests as people rather than case studies.
The outcome
More than 10,000 listens across the series
A full series created, produced and delivered for Manchester City Council
Stories platformed that mainstream coverage of Manchester routinely misses
“If you have a chance to understand the lives of other people, why would you not take it? You’ll be surprised by what you find.”
Pryanka Shergill, host
