Hackney Marshes, Football and Adventures with BBC Radio 1

Over the last few months I’ve been putting together a radio documentary for the Roundhouse about breaking into the radio industry. Making the documentary involved hassling lots of radio professionals to do interviews with us. After emailing Amy Redmond (the Radio 1 producer who tutored me in the ‘Penniless Podcaster’ class) about helping us out, she emailed back saying:

  

Amy Redmond!

“Hey Shaun,

Nice one, totally, and you're bbc too yay!

Well, can I set you a lil fun challenge in return?!  I am making lots of short video/audio clips about east London in the run up to radio 1's hackney weekend. I want to get down to hackney marshes either this or next Sunday to do some voxes with some local footballers about 'their hackney' to clip together and make a short podcast. Maybe to take a few pics too.

It will be going on the radio 1 academy page, so it’s a good thing to have done in terms of experience and it'll be fun too!”

Well, I thought it sounded like a fun day out… and it was!

Here’s a recording of Amy talking about the podcast and why we are making it about the marshes. It was recorded whilst walking along a canal in Hackney on a beautifully scenic day, so you can hear the sound of Amy’s bike rolling along as well as the sound of other cyclists who are out for a ride.



 For those of you who are curious about the process behind preparing for interviews, this is a recording of us discussing how we are going to go about getting the material we need for the podcast:

 

Here’s the podcast me and Amy put together:

For those of you who don’t know, the Hackney Weekend is a this huge daylong music festival organised by the BBC that is descending down on the Hackney Marshes. There’re some big names, like Rihanna and Jay Z – and the tickets are more or less given away for free to kids in and around London, with a substantial bulk of them being set aside for the young people of Hackney. Amy is the 'social media content producer' for the Hackney Weekend, hence why she was making the podcast. She's also a Hackney resident, so she was really keen to make something that celebrated her area.

The Hackney Marshes are massive. You'll find it laden with football pitches and hundreds of footballers. There are probably over a dozen matches going on simultaneously on a Sunday morning. It’s loud and lively – so you can pick up some great sounds for radio. Plus, it didn’t make it into the final piece, but there’s always lots of foul language coming from the sides of the pitches.

However, all the footballers were really friendly and willing to go on the record about how much they loved the marshes. A recurring theme was how it’s like one big family at the marshes and there’s a deep sense of community.

After we recorded the voxes, I interviewed Amy and asked her a few questions about getting a job in the industry for my radio documentary. You'll be able to hear her responses, along with advice from 4 other radio professionals in 'Making It' - a 30 minute guide to a career in radio - coming soon to this blog! Actually Amy Redmond has already posted up on her blog! See it at: http://amyredmond.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/making-it-in-radio-industry.html

You can find out more about the Hackney Weekend at: 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/events/e9wmxj