How Can Individuals Welcome Working Class Audio Professionals?
Aug 16th
Our recent article series about the experiences of working class and financially insecure audio professionals has shown a need for more inclusion and opportunities across class lines. In the final article on the topic, our writer Francesca Turauskis suggests some actions for individuals to make audio a more welcoming career path…
My deep-dive into the topic of class, socioeconomics and audio in the past couple of months has been somewhat disheartening, but the response that our articles have been receiving has been loud. There is a level of resonance from many people struggling with the current state of the industry.
Whether you are working for a company, freelancing in various roles or looking for work, it can sometimes seem like changing the audio industry is too big a challenge on an individual level. However, some of the anecdotes we’ve seen in this series have proved to me that there is plenty that we can do as individuals to make audio more welcoming.
Encourage Authentic Accents
Accent snobbery is something that has come up a few times in this series, and it’s easy to trace this back to the early days of radio. If I’m being generous, I would acknowledge that audio relies on voice to convey meaning and so for producers and voice directors, an accent might be a consideration for how the audience will perceive the speaker and story being told.
The difficulty comes when we as creators expect (and even rely on) stereotypes as a shortcut to storytelling. Accents get pigeon-holed into genres, and identities get pigeonholed into sounding a certain way. We heard from Chris Mitchell (Breaking Atoms) last article and how he’s been told his voice is “not street enough”. When Chris was working on Redemption Man (part of Unedited’s Pilot Season 2024 and a recipient of the Content is Queen 2022 micro-grant) this was something he found himself doubting too: “I told myself, ‘your voice does not slap’.”
Whilst most people don’t like listening to their own voice for various reasons, this specifically speaks to the lack of vocal representation and is not to be ignored. Sangeeta Pillai of the Masala Podcast (a multi-award-winning show) commented after my article that she had to work hard to ‘like’ her accent because “all the voices I heard on British radio/audio sounded ‘posh British'”. Both producers and listeners are used to that stereotype, but when accents become a definer for the type of work people get hired for, the lack of opportunity self-perpetuates the lack of representation.
The good news is that as producers and directors, individuals have the power to change what we hear. With Redemption Man, Chris was encouraged by Unedited’s Founder, Bernard P. Achampong, to be authentic with his narration. Bernard reassured Chris that he was the right person to tell the story: “He asked ‘Why are YOU telling this story?’ I did some soul-searching and rewrote the script with personal reflections and anecdotes. That’s when it clicked for me. The script came together nicely, and I knocked out the voiceover in over 30 minutes.”
What is lovely (and telling) about this anecdote is how it shaped not just the delivery, but the script of the show. Who knows what creativity we are missing by asking for carbon-copy narration and script? Since then, Chris has done voiceover work for other projects. “I’ve received so much positive feedback about my voice. It’s funny how that works.”
So please – don’t correct accents or expect people to speak a certain way. Encourage the authentic voice of all the professionals you work with.
Expand The Social Side of Work
One thing that I briefly touched on when talking about cultural capital was how joint experiences can make networking easier for people. This can be shared backgrounds (such as the unique experience of Oxbridge education that is overrepresented in media) but it can also help when people build connections around shared interests and hobbies.
This type of connection also shows up in office culture, and it can be a big part of whether a workplace feels welcoming to everyone. The Multitrack initiative, which helps arrange paid placements in production companies, mentions this aspect of the work/office environment in the Host Company Code that they ask participating companies to agree to:
“…encourage the Multitrack fellow to be part of the social side of workplace culture and will include them in any appropriate group activity, without pressure or fear of repercussions if they aren’t able to attend.”
As individuals, it’s worth pausing to think about the social side of your workplace and how you contribute to it. Do group activities rely on having the money to participate? Are there aspects that might rely on shared background or specific knowledge? If so, consider if there is a way you can expand this social side to be more universal. That doesn’t mean you have to stop socialising in a way you enjoy, but it does mean noticing and stopping any repercussions or exclusion that may have unconsciously developed.
Offer Mentorship
One of the most tangible ways you can help develop and encourage a welcoming culture in audio is to offer mentorship to individuals who are underrepresented in audio. This is especially important if your workplace doesn’t offer placement opportunities, but you could also offer it to someone who did a short placement to you. Mentorship is a really effective way of meaningfully increasing representation in the workplace, as it can help address the needs and concerns of an individual, as well as provide ongoing support and advice to help them find opportunities.
It’s not just the mentees that benefit from mentorship programmes, as mentors can also learn a lot from the experience, such as gaining market insights from a different generation. If you are interested in providing this kind of support to someone, there aren’t currently many audio-focused mentorship programmes to support you as the mentor in the process. An exception is the Radio Academy RAMP mentoring scheme for mid-career radio and audio professionals, and it would be great if this type of partnering was extended to the 30 Under 30 cohort as well.
Another option is Arts Emergency, which is offering a new mentorship programme across the arts, including radio and podcasting. If you are happy to be paired with a 16-18 year old for a 12-month period, the scheme offers training and support to you as a mentor as well.
What Have We Learnt From This Series?
When I started writing about this topic, I thought that it would be a single article sharing some issues around how the class gap showed up in audio. However, I couldn’t ignore the passionate response from a wide range of professionals sharing anecdotes around the situation. We’ve seen that financial insecurity is an issue across class lines, and it is a major contributor to who is able to stay in the audio industry. However, we’ve also seen that pay rates are not the only factor in who gets hired for work – the personal experiences of working class individuals show a divide that goes beyond money.
As the initial Creative PEC report that kicked off this topic shows, many of these problems are not unique to the audio industry – but if we want audio to be a sustainable industry that continues to grow and innovate, making audio a uniquely welcoming industry should be seen as a priority.
Thank you to everyone who filled in the survey, spoke to me about their experience and shared their thoughts on the article on social media.
Read The Other Articles In This Series:
How Is The Class Gap Affecting Audio And Podcasting Professionals?