1. YASS! Masterclass Program 22
Radio Papesse and Lucia support creative authorship, new voices and innovative productions that play with and around the limits and rules of radio production and podcasting.
YASS! You are so sound is a training and exchange program for producers, audio makers and sound artists – emerging or otherwise – who have a proven track record in audio storytelling; it provides them with skills and resources to advance their projects and careers.
This series allows participants to discover and listen to peers from different latitudes, traditions, languages… and discover methodologies and insights for sound creation along with them. Each masterclass will provide them with tools and behind-the-scenes perspectives to discover how others work and learn from good practices.
The 2022 edition of YASS! features Helen Zaltzman, Mitra Kaboli, Felix Blume, Sara de Monchy and Nanna Hauge Kristensen.
2. (Almost) everything you want to know about YASS!
How do I register for the masterclasses?
TO JOIN, PLEASE FILL IN THE ONLINE FORM
Up to 30 people may take part in each masterclass. If the seats in the masterclass(es) you have decided to attend are sold out, please send an email to yass@radiopapesse.org with the following subject line: Waiting list + Masterclass name.
How much do the masterclasses cost?
We would have liked to keep the series free of charge, but we do ask you for a small contribution to cover organizational costs: €5 per lesson, €25 for the entire programme. The value of what we’ll share is much greater, we know that as much as you do. We always strive to ensure that our content and activities are accessible, also economically, to the community we share our profession and passion for audio with. But we also have to think about the sustainability of what we do – Radio Papesse is a non-profit cultural association – and for free is never cost-free for us… However YASS! is free of charge for all students who can prove they are enrolled in the current year.
What are the requirements for participation?
YASS! is a programme designed for authors, artists and audio producers, but also for those who want to fine tune their own voice and improve their tools and techniques.
Participants in the masterclasses must have at least a basic knowledge of audio production. Participants must have a good knowledge of English.
Where do the masterclasses take place?
YASS! masterclasses take place online (Felix Blume, Mitra Kaboli e Helen Zaltzman) while Sara de Monchy’s e Nanna Hauge Kirstensen’s classes will be both virtual and live in Florence.
All participants will be sent detailed instructions and a private link to access the streaming.
If you can’t find what you’re looking for here, write to yass@radiopapesse.org
3. 2022 Digital Masterclass / Masterclasses
Helen Zaltzman
Boring Interesting
November 10th, 6pm
Not all audio stories are personal; not all are emotional. The Allusionist is a show about language, so the stories belong to hundreds, millions, even billions of people, some currently alive, some of whom may have been dead for 2,000 years. The purpose of the show is not to showcase an individual’s lived experience, but to make the depersonalised relevant to whichever person is listening, whether it is as devastating as the oppression of people via language, or as dry and dispassionate as indefinite hyperbolic numerals. How do you carve a narrative from such a gigantic, idiosyncratic, sprawling mess as language, then make something so complex into an easily digestible 25-minute entertainment podcast for all ages and knowledge backgrounds?
Helen Zaltzman is a multiple award-winning podcast host and producer. She is entirely self-taught and works mostly alone, usually from bed. Her linguistics entertainment podcast The Allusionist covers topics ranging from oppressed language and queer history, to protest cakes and weird facts about falcons. The live theatrical spin-off has appeared on stages around the world. Answer Me This, the comedy show she began with Olly Mann in 2007, was one of Britain’s longest-running and most successful independent podcasts, ran for 400 episodes and nearly 15 years. She founded the Podcasters’ Support Group on Facebook to provide a home for all podcasters’ most tedious questions about microphones and hosting sites.
Mitra Kaboli
Behind the scenes of Welcome to Provincetown
November 17th, 6pm
In 2021, when Ben Riskin – one of the founders of Room Tone – asked her to work on a series about Provincetown, Mitra Kaboli did not expect to move there for the whole summer. Too good to be true. And yet… PTown – the Massachusetts beach town best known for its popularity in the LGBTQ+ community – welcomed her.
Welcome to Provincetown is a series somewhere between the immediacy of a reality show and the multifaceted depth of the best documentaries: it is an extraordinary example of how a distinctive auteur like Mitra Kaboli can put herself at the service of other people’s stories in order to sketch a portrait that is ultimately and exquisitely collective.
In this behind-the-scenes review of Welcome to Provincetown, Mitra Kaboli will talk about the challenges and choices that have accompanied her over this past year of work. Mitra Kaboli is an award-winning audio documentarian and multimedia artist who has been working professionally in radio and podcasting since 2012. Her work has been featured on The Heart, NPR’s Latino USA, Making Contact, ESPN’s 30 for 30 and Audible Productions. Currently, she is the host of the critically acclaimed podcast Welcome to Provincetown.
Felix Blume
Listening to the other(s)
December 1st, 6pmm
More than sound, listening is the central point of Felix Blume’s work: listening as a way to relate to others, to meet and learn from the other(s). Revisiting previous projects, such as his audio piece Los gritos de México – which earned him the “Pierre Schaeffer” Prize at Phonurgia Nova Festival 2015 – and the 2019 film Curupira, creature of the woods, he will delve into the collaborative approach of his practice and talk about his relationship with listening.
Félix Blume is a sound artist and sound engineer. He currently works and lives between Mexico, Brazil and France. He uses sound as a basic material in sound pieces, videos, actions and installations. His process is often collaborative, working with communities, using public space as the context within which he explores and presents his works. He is interested in myths and their contemporary interpretation, in human dialogues both with inhabited natural and urban contexts, in what voices can tell beyond words.
His sound pieces have been broadcast on radios all over the world, and he has participated in international festivals and exhibitions including Rotterdam IFF (2021), Berlinale (2019), Thailand Biennale (2018), CENTEX Chile (2017), CTM Berlin (2017), Fonoteca Nacional Mexico (2016), LOOP Barcelona (2015) and Tsonami Arte Sonoro Chile (2015, 2018).
Sara de Monchy
How to make exiting youth audio
December 9th, 5.45pm
Sara de Monchy is a theater and podcast director. She graduated from the Royal Theatre Academy in Maastricht, and has several successful theater productions to her credit. Her love for fantasy, audio and theater comes together in her well acclaimed podcast Sara’s Mysteries, in which she solves mysteries with kids: who is the owner of that creepy little shed, where is my dog who suddenly disappeared, and what is hidden in the basement of my school? The podcast was nominated for different prizes and is a binge worthy ritual for many Dutch families!
In this interactive workshop, with the help of raw material, failed and successful scenes, Sara retraces the steps she took as she created Sara’s Mysteries. We discover the importance of ‘excitement’ for youth, how to get into the head of elusive 11-year-olds and how to make them talk freely about their biggest questions. We discover where you really can’t get away with making audio for children, and why ‘the car’ is a returning location in Sara’s Mysteries.
After this workshop, you will have a fresh ground for creating your own podcast for children!
Nanna Hauge Kristensen
Loss, Rain and Listening as an act of intimacy.
December 10th, 2.30pm
A central aspect of audio making is listening. For Nanna Hauge Kristensen, listening entails a bodily attentiveness – an attunement to the Other, it creates a space where openness and exchanges can unfold. Her audio pieces often revolve around loss and beginnings, and her work moves across anthropology, documentarism and art. In her sonic explorations of lifeworlds and atmospheres, she seeks to cultivate a deep ethnographic listening: “What attracts me – Nanna says – both as an audio maker and a listener, are the intimate, sensory, and open-ended representations of the complex world that we share.” For this masterclass, she will invite us into her practice, sharing examples of her work, and offering some reflections on listening as a creative method.
Nanna Hauge Kristensen is an audio producer and anthropologist based in Copenhagen. Her work has won several international awards, including the Third Coast International Audio Award for Best Foreign Documentary.
YASS! is organized thanks to the support of Regione Toscana Toscanaincontempornaea 2022, Comune di Firenze, Città Metropolitana di Firenze, Fondazione CR Firenze, Kingdom of the Netherland, Unicoop Firenze.