A City for You
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
This podcast is an open space for people to discuss their relationships with the city and hear other people's view on it. I want people from all over the world to realise that typical citizens, surrounding them, are interesting people, whose stories deserve being heard.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
This project contributes to a sustainable, attractive and inclusive lifestyle of listeners globally, raising questions related to urban living, future and present cities and nighttime in city environments.
Each week I talk to one citizen who shares their thoughts on what is a city and what they are to he city. It is important to me to talk to different people, encouraging diversity and inclusiveness within the community. The fact that the podcast is hosted in two languages also allows a bigger audience to interact with these thoughts and processes.
This project is neither about hot topic, nor educational platform. It is a place to share thoughts on the city and hear others' thoughts on it.
For the past year all the episodes have been recorded in one city, which I did not plan for but it was a great chance to talk with people with different backgrounds and lived-city history, reinforcing the notion of how different one city can be used and perceived by different people.
Key objectives for sustainability
The key objective of this project has been to contribute to a sustainable, diverse and inclusive city life by letting different people's ideas be pronounced and heard. I feel like the only existence of this platform invites for some thoughts about the urban fabric we live in.
Sustainability is one of the reoccurring topics on the podcast, which might be linked to its location, Sweden, and I like the fact that these thoughts are spread throughout the world via the spoken word. The process of creating the podcast requires hardly any resources, which also makes it a little carbon footprint project with a feedback that could spread wide.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
This format is purely about the experience and there is no clear function to listening to a podcast.
I feel like audio format allows for flexibility when consuming it, hence it is versatile and listeners can take it with them whenever they would like - I would normally listen to a podcast when I am travelling in public transport as this reminds me that strangers around me also have interesting stories to tell, adding to my openness and perception of the surroundings in that way.
I believe that listening to urban stories from different people enriches the experience of the listeners, allowing them to see things from a new perspective and to add to the aesthetics of the every day life if they choose to.
Key objectives for inclusion
Diversity and inclusion underline the podcast values when it comes to guest selection and the language used in social media and other platforms when it comes to project-related posts and events. One of the main tools for that is not to assume but to ask. This is partially why in this podcast I always ask the same five questions to different people. I have asked them 83 times already and never got the same answer. While I could have assumed that I know the answer to that question and can guess what others would say, I keep asking and learning new perspectives each week and sharing them with others.
Innovative character
When I started this project, podcast industry in Russian language has not been developed, so Russian speaking episodes find have felt innovative at the time, while English speaking ones, of course did not come an a brand-new thing at all. While for me personally, starting a podcast was a challenging an innovative process and still is at times as I aim at developing its quality in different aspects.
The innovative idea of this project for a wider audience is that it is an ever-growing platform for inter-citizen discussion that invites different voices, while not opposing them to each other, hence not leaving space for conflict but rather to new thoughts and feelings. I see it this way.
