Making a podcast

Mentee

Amie Charlie

AYDA Women + Caribou Heart Designs

Gwich’in and Kaska, Watson Lake, YT and Inuvik, NWT

Mentor

Héel' (Lyndsay) Amato

Amato Creatives

Carcross/Tagish First Nation, Whitehorse, YT and Regina, SK

Project Concept:

Developing a podcast based on conversations with change-makers in the north

Mentorship style:

One on one

Amie Charlie

Amie Charlie (she/her) is a Kaska, Gwich’in, Métis, and Irish Artist and Entrepreneur who was born and raised in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. She belongs to the Wolf Clan and is a member of Liard First Nation.

She is the Co-Founder of AYDA Women, a woman-led nonprofit that is dedicated to building the collective power of Indigenous women, girls, 2S, and gender diverse folks in the Beaufort Delta Region. She currently lives in the Yukon and spends her free time creating beadwork and jewelry as Caribou Heart Designs. She credits her Grandmothers and younger sister’s teachings when it comes to learning beadwork and all of its creative forms.

Amie is passionate about community, sustainable business, and advocating for Indigenous rights. She holds a bachelor's degree in International Development and is planning to apply to med school next year.

She plans to launch her podcast later this year.

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Héel' (Lyndsay) Amato

Lyndsay Amato is a freelance Teaching Artist with over 18 years of experience in education and 20 years of experience in Rez Radio. She is a member of the Carcross Tagish First Nation and holds a certificate with honours in Education Assistance and a Diploma with honours in Early Learning and Child Care, both from Yukon University.

She is passionate about strengthening First Nation perspectives within community programs by working with various boards and committees in the arts and education sector. She believes that by helping organizations and individuals decolonize the way they work within their community, it will have a positive impact for generations to come. She also creates and delivers workshops based on skills in land-based education, mental health, healthy relationships, and media.

Why this project?

“I think I just love storytelling. So anytime that I can connect with someone and having like a solid conversation is just always so uplifting for me personally.

Along my journey I've just met so many amazing people who like, just are just doing the thing, you know. They're just making s**t happen in the community and without any credit. You know they're not they're not in it for like the accolades and I just really want to highlight them and provide a little platform for them to share their story.

And just even the people in my life that I'm just so inspired by, like, I really want to have those conversations with them.”

Amie Charlie

Mentee

“The skills that I give youth are transferable in every way. It's conversation skills, confidence building, you know, targeting what their values are. And telling my story of how I came from Carcross and, like, a traumatic childhood, and all of this stuff, and how I didn't go to school for radio. And it was just a dream I had, and I just went for it."

Héel' (Lyndsay) Amato

Mentor

Core skills

Designing a podcast concept
Recording an introductory episode and editing the content
Exploring platforms and making a release plan

Why this project?

The story behind Amie’s podcast

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I had a lot of ideas for podcast episodes to start but Lyndsay encouraged me to slow down and reflect on my values and why I wanted to make a podcast. She wanted the first episode just be about who am I and like what are the things that have like shaped me to be the person that I am today and kind of like some lessons that I've learned along the way. A big part of this process has been doing the internal work of getting clear about my creative vision for this podcast... This is the story behind my inspiration for the podcast:

The title of the podcast is the Power and Purpose podcast and it just really highlights, like, Indigenous power and like how people are just doing amazing things within the communities. And the purpose is kind of like the life lessons of the guests and like the more personal side of things and touching on some spiritual stuff as well. Like, how they've overcome, you know, different trials and the purpose and meaning that they found in that.

I went through like a really dark time back in 2015. It was like a really, really trying time. And through series events, I remember I came across this little book and it was like a devotional book of evening and like morning readings. It was December 13th and this was the evening excerpt. It was like a verse and it said, “I will give you treasures of darkness.”

And I was like, "What the heck?" And it went on to say like how there are some things that you can only learn in the dark -- that you can't learn when things are going great -- in the light, so to speak. And that when you’re going through like “the school of suffering” quote, unquote, there's just things that you can only kind of realize and learn in those trying times.

That really kind of was a catalyst, that experience -- it sparked my passion to help with, like, mental health and create my nonprofit AYDA (Arctic Youth Development Agency).

So when I shared that with Lyndsay, she was like, that's your tagline. She's like, finding treasures of darkness -- the purpose behind your podcast is, like, to find those treasures of darkness within each of the guests that you talk to.

Yeah, she had a really like beautiful and powerful way of like listening too, cause she wanted to know about me. And she tied things together and really was able to talk it back to me. And I was like, “Okay, like that's, that's the direction that we're going to go.” - Amie

Stay tuned for the launch of the Power and Purpose podcast!

Amie Charlie

Mentee

PROJECT EXCERPT

Learning Pathway

Amie’s steps: Preparation

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Amie spent significant time developing her creative vision. Lyndsay encouraged her to get to the heart of why she wanted to do a podcast. Amie got clear on the values she wanted to embed in the podcast and who it would be for.
She designed a logo based on her title. Amie used the ‘Brand Kit’ on Canva to do this.
Amie chose a style/common theme to link the episodes together (ie. a biographic style focused on changemakers in her community).
Amie brainstormed a list of people to interview, topics she’ll cover, questions she’ll ask, and decided to aim for an average of 40 min per episode.
She came up with a title and tagline that captured the spirit of the podcast: the Power and Purpose Podcast: Finding Treasures in Darkness.
Most importantly, she created a personal ritual for herself before recording. She recommends smudging or lighting a candle to ground yourself.

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Amie’s steps: Recording

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Amie recorded an introductory episode where she focused on her own story as a way to introduce herself to her audience. This also served as a blueprint for future episodes.

Amie gathered all the equipment she needed to make an episode: headphones, a mic, her laptop, and a hard drive to store the episodes on. You could also make an entire episode just with your phone. Tip: Spend time getting comfortable with your equipment -- practice speaking into your mic and interviewing people. Remember to keep your mic muted or remain quiet while your guest is speaking so the audio doesn’t have too much background noise in it.
She reached out a friend who is a local musician to create a theme song for her podcast. You could also use a freelance platform like Fiver, or make your own.
Amie is using the audio app, Røde, on her phone to record her first episode. There aremany audio apps out there for you to try!

Amie’s steps: Post-production

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Amie will create an introduction to use at the start of each episode that includes the title of the podcast, theme music, and a clip introducing herself and the episode to her listeners.
She’ll edit it all together into an episode using podcasting software. Lyndsay recommends using Audacity or Anchor.
Amie looked into how she’ll distribute her podcast: independently or using a platform like Spotify, Soundcloud or Buzzsprout.

Soon she’ll begin publicizing her podcast and release her first episode: Stay tuned for the launch of the Power and Purpose podcast!

What’s the most important thing you learned?

“I think sometimes, actually in a lot of work, we can kind of feel, like, imposter syndrome creeping in, of just like, ’Am I qualified to do this? Can I do this? Am I able to do this?'

But I guess one piece of advice that I heard, that's really helped me along the way came from one of my board members from AYDA. She gave me encouragement once and told me, ‘Amie, if you're doing it, then, you know, you can do it. If you're already doing the work, then you know, in my opinion, then you’re qualified.’ And that really played a big role.

But also, if you need help too, ask for help. Because I think sometimes we can have tunnel vision of like, 'Yes, I'm going to do this!' but like, holy, you're going to get burnt out. There’s so much power in asking your community for help.

There's things that, just like in business, you're going to learn along the way. And your end product is very rarely the exact same product that you set out to do. It changes along the way and I think being open to that is half the battle.

The journey in whatever initiative that you're doing, is gonna have a journey all of its own and being open to, you know, being flexible and being willing to learn, I think goes a long way.”

What’s next?

“I’ve shifted lately to doing more like community health research with Yukon University. I have a new role in Watson Lake and it's been great and it aligns a lot with what I'm wanting to do in the future, which is to pursue medicine.

It’s kind of a dream that’s being reawakened because I thought about that years ago. I've always wanted to be a doctor through high school. Through personal experience with the healthcare systems in the north, like in NWT and Yukon, with family members - it just really kind of highlighted the need for like Indigenous representation.

Maybe this podcast can potentially connect me with other health and wellness professionals in different communities that I may have not otherwise connected with.” -Amie

Tips, tricks and advice

Go slowly: taking your time and being thoughtful and intentional about what you want to create and why will only strengthen your voice and your podcast.
Practice your interviewing skills: let the conversation with your guest flow but redirect it back to the original topic/question when you find yourselves going down a rabbit hole.
As a self-employed person the costs (equipment, audio software) you take on can be claimed as business expenses on your taxes.
It’s a big deal to put yourself out there - plan how you will practice self care while you’re doing this work; and how you will create safe spaces for your interviewees before and after the interview.