Meet Bea Duncan: Comfort and Communities in Audio

Sep 13th

Many people with their ear to the ground in the podcast industry will be familiar with Bea Duncan’s work. As an award winning creative, producer, and sound designer, she’s led production on some highly acclaimed and awarded shows, including Anthems for Broccoli Productions, Power Lines with The Kyiv Independent, and Who Robs A Banksy for Podimo UK. It’s this type of work that has made her a nominee for Producer of the Year at the Audio Production Awards in 2023, and has listed her as both a Radio Academy 30 under 30 and a PodPod ‘One To Watch’.

But Bea is also working within the audio industry on initiatives for inclusion that don’t come with awards, such as the Entry Level Audio Network (ELAN), which she co-founded to be a safe, supportive, network space for anyone who self-identifies as being entry level. “That’s a really important part of it,” she tells us. “You could be trying to break into the industry having just graduated or you could have worked in another industry for 20 years, or you’ve been in the industry for five years but still don’t feel like you’ve got that secure footing. If you feel like you need that support, then ELAN’s for you”.

Francesca Turauskis sat down with her to talk about the difficulties there are entering the audio industry, the importance of nurturing entry level producers, and how the power for change doesn’t only lie in the decisions made at company level.

FT: When did you know that you wanted to work in audio?

BD: I always knew that I would thrive in a creative job of some kind and I discovered podcasts when I was about sixteen. [It would have been] 2012 or 2013, and I remember sneaking off to the back of my school library with my iPod Classic, when I was supposed to be doing revision or something, listening to the latest episode of something that I would’ve downloaded manually on iTunes.

My first memories of podcasting were intimate moments alone with my headphones in, and I remember being very inspired by the range of what was possible with audio. I listened to Welcome to Night Vale a lot, a show called Philosophy Bites and there was a comedy chatty podcast called If I Were You, which was the first podcast from what eventually became Head Gum. Then, like a lot of people, a few years later it was Serial.

I found the possibilities of storytelling really fascinating. It felt like people were really innovating and it was a new artistic space for people to try new things, which was incredible. Also, the ability to create something very stimulating just with one sense, which still keeps you hanging as much as a television show or film.

I don’t think I realised that could be a job – I don’t know how possible it would’ve been at that point, it wouldn’t have been the same level of industry we have now. I went to university instead and did philosophy, but I joined my student radio station. I’m really grateful for those first few years of audio purely as a hobby because I could try so many different formats and start to understand what kind of audio storyteller I wanted to be.

FT: So when did you get your first job in audio and realise it could be a career?

BD: It was probably after a few years there that I was like, “oh wow, I actually could make a career out of this”. I was the deputy station manager of the [university] station and that was probably a full-time job – an unpaid one. I probably spent more time doing that than my actual degree.
When I left university, I did a lot of community radio, a lot of my own podcast projects. I did any course I could find, I was really trying very hard to get into the industry. My first actual, paid job was an independent radio station as a freelance assistant producer and I was doing a bunch of other random freelance shifts anywhere that I could get any sort of audio work.

Throughout that entire time I wanted to make the move into podcasting and my first podcasting job was as an AP [Assistant Producer] on a BBC Sounds podcast with – at that point, a brand new company – Broccoli Productions, which very quickly turned into a full-time job. That was the first time that I actually felt settled and secure in the audio industry. That was two and a half years after entering and I remember so vividly that feeling of relief of “I’m on the right track now”.

FT: You co-founded the Entry Level Audio Network (ELAN) around that time in 2019, which is about networking with your peers. What was it about your own experience that you decided ELAN was needed?

BD: It really came from a frustration about the experiences I’d had in my first few years and things that I’d seen with other people. There wasn’t a space to express those frustrations or to help someone else who might be in a similar position. Unpaid internships were rife, even the paid entry level jobs were not enough to live on – which is probably still the case now. The radio station that I worked at paid something wild like £50 a day to basically be a studio producer, so I had a heap of other jobs on the side. I even fed pigs at an urban farm!

To be frank, the work environment was not very good. I actually left the audio industry entirely for a few months between that job and joining Broccoli because I was burnt out and completely lacking in confidence – which is crazy and not normal after being in an industry for two years.

I can only look back now and realise what a bad environment that was for somebody who was just trying to get a foot in the door. I just wish that there had been somebody there to tell me “that rate is not normal, the treatment is not normal”.

At the time, I also felt quite out of place in spaces that were for audio professionals because I felt so low in confidence that I didn’t feel confident saying “I’m an audio producer”. I saw people getting their heads bitten off for asking really simple questions that I also wanted the answers to. So I decided to start ELAN and I wanted it to be a place where anything goes – ‘stupid questions’, asking advice about the industry, a place to connect and make friends as well, which is really lovely.

FT: How many people do you have in the group now?

BD: Many hundreds. I want to say 600? We’re on Facebook because Facebook was big in 2019, and there’s still people joining every day. I honestly did not think that it was going to get to the size that it is now. I truly thought there’d be ten people in a group meeting up for a drink every now and then, so clearly it was something that was very, very needed.

I run it with a wonderful producer, Tess Davidson, and we now also have a small team of entry level people. It’s actually really lovely because the people who joined when I first started the group are now my peers in the industry and I’ve seen them succeed. They’ve become the next generation of audio talent.

There’s still a huge amount to be done and we are still a tiny team of volunteers with absolutely no funding but we have grand plans that we’re trying to enact.

FT: That peer-to-peer support is obviously needed. How do you think companies can better support entry level audio professionals?

BD: To be honest, I really don’t see many audio companies who are genuinely serious about fostering junior talent. Our group is full to the brim with the most eager, hungry and talented creators that I’ve ever seen who just can’t find work. It’s heartbreaking because I feel like I’m letting them down even though I know I’m not. But I want to be able to give people jobs.

It’s such a tired phrase, but if companies wanted to, they would. And so if I was being facetious the number one thing that I would say for companies to better support entry level talent is: just want to. Just commit.

If I was going to be serious, it would be: jobs and pay. Actual entry level jobs where you don’t need experience and you should just be able to enjoy podcasting and be creative and have ideas. I think that would be really great. What I do see is a lot of poorly paid ‘entry level’ jobs that have the requirements of a producer level or seem to require degrees in audio production masters. I would love to see more people take a chance on entry-level freelancers too.

Obviously if companies were serious about improving accessibility, then we need jobs to be higher paid, they can’t be wages that were good enough five years ago. I would love to see companies seeking out fresh talent – whether that be making well-paid apprenticeships for a year, or putting on courses for people for free. The Entry Level Audio Network is just full of people who don’t even know where to go to apply for jobs, or they have applied for many, many jobs and they don’t feel like they can get a look in.

There are a couple of companies where I see good initiatives, but I just genuinely think it’s as simple as hiring actual entry level staff members and nurturing them. Those people will reward you as well. I’m somebody who was given an opportunity when I had never had a podcasting job before and then I was nurtured and I stayed at that company for a really long time.

FT: I agree with you, we do know what the answers are. So perhaps the more appropriate question is – what do you think is stopping companies from just doing it?

BD: You’ve written about it, it’s not just entry level, there are problems at every level of production right now with stagnant wages and with mistreatments. Budgets for shows are getting smaller, timelines are getting smaller. I think when every hour is money, companies just really want people who are going to take on a job for less money and deliver it in half the time. I think that’s all it is and I wish I could say something more than “stop doing that”.

FT: You’ve had a lot of recognition for the work that you’ve done. You’ve got 30 Under 30 from the Radio Academy, you’ve had award-winning shows and you mentioned Broccoli took a little bit of a punt on you and they nurtured you. What kind of things could companies be getting by nurturing this talent?

BD: I think dedication is one. If people feel nurtured by a company, they’re going to stay for a long time and everyone knows that it costs more to rehire somebody than it does to keep someone on. Not that I would usually think that way, but speaking the company’s language, that’s just a fact.

Those things that you mentioned, obviously I’m proud of those, but they’re not the markers of success for me. The work that got those achievements was what I’m proud of. That’s the stuff that the company would get: you’re going to get perspectives. If you help somebody and give them the opportunity to just try and fail – but they might try and succeed or they just keep getting better.

Yeah, you will also get acclaim and you can help young producers get a new producer award or whatever it might be. But the actual markers of success are in the work that gets made. We talk about diversifying the industry, and I think a lot of people think about that as lip service and “how does it look?” And it’s not about that. It’s about perspectives. We work in the business of storytelling and how are you supposed to get the thousands of millions of perspectives of human life from around the globe without having that many perspectives in an industry? If you are only able to get one particular perspective, it’s just going to make a very dull and boring industry.

FT: We’ve talked about what companies can do, but for individuals you’re running the Power of the Producer panel as part of the International Women’s Podcast Festival. What is it about that producer dynamic that is important to you?

BD: For a long time I’ve been thinking about the fact that as producers, the work we do, no matter what it is that we’re making, is always political. It’s not neutral. I think that people assume they have to be making current affairs programmes or documentaries or news content for it to be political, but that’s not the case. The places we choose to work or the topics that we cover or the guests that we book, the behaviour that we might witness at our workplaces that we don’t stand up against – all of that is important and feeds into the wider issues that we see in the industry.

I think about the Equality In Audio Pact, which was something that Broccoli Productions created as a kind-of ‘call to arms’ for the industry in 2020. There were a lot of large companies who it was interesting and important that we wanted them to sign. I saw a lot of people almost kind of going, “oh, well my company has signed this. That’s me done”. And they were still making the choice to appear on panels that weren’t representative, for example, or they were still making content that didn’t align with the values that I knew they had. That was interesting and I kind of felt we’ve all got a choice in this life.

At the same time, I’ve seen a lot of parts of our industry become very obsessed with commercial success and money. It’s just where we’re at at the moment with arts and with funding and all of the above. I don’t think it’s necessarily any one person’s fault, but I do think that I’ve had it where I’m having to make a programme in a specific amount of time because that’s what budgets will allow, and it means that it’s rushed and that the level of due diligence or care is not able to be given because it just physically can’t be.

It leads to contributors maybe feeling like they aren’t being valued in the process or a whole host of other things. So I am really interested to be having this discussion because I think it’s something that we maybe don’t talk about enough. It does feel sometimes, there’s that struggle of individualism versus the system. But I also think it’s about what we feel comfortable with on a day-to-day basis and we do have the ability to stand up for what’s right and we have the ability to say no to things, and we have the ability to make changes. Especially for producers who work pretty much alone or have a lot of autonomy in the work they do.

There’s a lot of different strands to the discussion, but that’s why it’s very important to me. I think it’s very important that we don’t just hold our hand up and go like, “well, the industry’s like this” because we’re taking the power away from ourselves when we have a lot of power to begin with.

FT: I feel like this is something that you’re going to go into in the panel, but do you have a top tip for making your contributors comfortable?

BD: The number one thing is just to be human. I think it’s always important to just remind yourself every single day that a contributor is doing you a favour by even speaking to you. They don’t have to make a podcast about something that’s happened to them, and it’s your duty to tell their story correctly, and that should be the number one thing that you’re thinking about.

Just always be asking them what they want. Do they want to be in a studio? Do they want to be at home because that makes them feel more comfortable? I’ve had it before where I’ve given somebody a recorder and just said, “I’m not even going to be there. You just say something into a microphone and then I will take that and turn that into a voiceover so that you don’t have to sit in a studio with a bunch of people you don’t know”. Never forget the contributor or the person giving you the story is the one in the driving seat. It’s not you, it’s never you. So you have to just make sure that they’re as comfortable as possible. It is never your content, ever.

I’d really recommend Jess Shane’s series, Shocking, Heartbreaking, Transformative for anyone who’s interested in examining their relationship to their work. That really put into practise a lot of the things that I’ve been thinking about over the years.

If you want to learn more about the power dynamics to consider when producing podcasts, Bea will be hosting the Power of the Producer Panel at this year’s International Women’s Podcast Festival on 4th October 2024. Tickets are on sale now.