Formative Blog Post

Community and Sustainability Podcasts

My final audio project is to be a two-part podcast series focusing on community gardens and city farms within London. The two pieces will aim to bring a focus to the importance of community gardens and city farms and how they benefit the community whilst also bringing sustainability to a modern city. I would like the two pieces to highlight these hidden spaces full of tranquillity and community spirit, and show off how truly special they are. The two pieces will feature interviews as well as myself and background ambience from the community gardens and the city farms.

When I began researching for this project, I had an already flourishing appreciation of my own for community gardening, which was useful, as my knowledge assisted me in where to find the appropriate research materials. I began researching firstly by visiting the Social Farms and Gardens website, which features two different maps which assisted me in locating not only which community gardens and farms I was going to approach to speak to on their community values and sustainability, but also featured their email addresses, making the process of contacting them much easier.

I have chosen to contact four city farms; Surrey Docks Farm, Mudchute Farm, Freightliners Farm, and Spitalfields City Farm. I chose these four farms based on their location, as they are all mostly in central London, I believe it will be interesting to see how they bring the community together despite being in the area of the country with the largest population.

I have chosen to contact multiple community gardens; Cordwainers Garden, King Henry’s Walk Garden, Meadow Orchard Gardens, Meanwhile Gardens, The Olden Garden, and Cable Street Community Garden. The community gardens I have chosen to contact are more spread out, as I am interesting in seeing how they benefit different areas of London, and bringing out the similarities and differences between each gardens approach to helping the community.

I have drafted up an email template which I will be sending out to each respective email address ASAP.

My rough production template, pending on email responses, is to record the interview aspect of both podcasts first, and then afterwards record the background sounds for both podcasts, As aforementioned, I am aiming to capture some of the sounds of the community gardens and the farms to add atmosphere to both pieces. So far, I believe the project is progressing well, although some aspects of the interviews, e.g. the questions I’m going to ask, are still in their rough drafts, but other than that I am pleased with the projects progression.