Podcast Programs

Throughout the fellowship, participants met as a group and one-on-one with seasoned audio creators and mentors to develop their project ideas, hone their skills, and navigate pathways to success in the podcast industry. Each project will also receive a creator grant to support the development of their work. For participants living more than 60km from the location of the sessions, a travel and accommodation stipend will be offered from another Canadian location.

                     

• 2021 Projects
  The program’s first year was co-facilitated by Aliya Pabani and Stephanie McArthur and featured Hannah Sung, Pacinthe Mattar, Dan Misener, Neena Pathak, and Megan Tan as mentors.
  
  20 Red Flags: Gold and Lies in the Jungle
  Creator: Nicole Doucette and Lucas Kavanagh
  A small Canadian company convinced everyone they found the world’s biggest gold mine: but a man jumped out of a helicopter, and everything fell apart.
  
  Exceptionalisn’t
  Creator: Melissa Haughton
  A journey into why averageness should be the new Black excellence. How we redefine ideas of who is allowed to fail, and why doing half as much can be twice as good.
  
  Camp Canadiana (formerly Made Up Words)
  Creator: Isabelle Ruiz De La Orden
  Camp Canadiana invites you into the complex world of Canadian summer camps. As camps work to reconcile their complicated histories, the story of summer camps in Canada will be retold, re-examined, and offered anew.
  
  Money No Get Enemy
  Creator: Oshamimi Mayaki and Alexandra Sproule
  From the middle ages, caravans crossed the desert and ships crossed the seas bringing money, lots of it, to exchange for West Africa’s riches. This is the story of that money, in all its forms, and what happened to all that wealth. These stories will transform your understanding of where money comes from and how it works.
  
  S is for Seva (formerly Stories My Grandma Never Told Me)
  Creator: Serena Parmer
  We used to go to our parents with questions about all the “cultural stuff”. Now we’re the parents! A new mom’s search for the hyphenated history of Sikh-Canadians, one of the earliest racialized communities in Canada. How do we pass history forward?
• 2023 Projects

  Mend It Like Beckham: 21 Years Later
  Creators: Sadia Ali and Chloe Navaretnam   
  Is Bend It Like Beckham a good movie? We're covering the impact this watershed moment in Desi visibility had on the entertainment landscape and beyond. Sadia and Chloe are fixing their relationship with this film, do you need to too? 

  You Deserve Nothing
  Creator: Clif Mark
  Meritocracy was supposed to make the world a fairer place for everyone. Instead, politicians from Reagan to Obama used it to justify a society that is less equitable, less mobile and ruthlessly nerdy.

  25 NorthEast - by IslamicFamily
  Creator: Hussain Khan 
  A narrative non-fiction podcast about Canadian-Muslim experiences. Each season, the podcast focuses on a theme and tells true stories from the community through people's lived experiences navigating a particular theme. Season 1 focuses on incarcerated Muslims and the people that work with them.

  Flight Response
  Creator: Kailun Chen
  The unhinged diary of a recovering Toronto lawyer who goes surfing once and decides maybe she should quit everything and move to Costa Rica instead. And all the overthinking about whether such a thing could possibly be ethical or whether it's just a delusional escape from millennial angst.

  The Baon Box
  Creator: Karen-Luz Sison
  Journey through the food scene of the most multicultural city in the world. Hear from the Toronto-based immigrants and refugees who make a living through their food—and the origin stories that make the city's food scene so special.

  Heart of Greed (alternatively: My Greedy Heart)
  Creator: Yasaman Mansoori
  The secret pleasure and agony of a double life. It's possible to keep physical worlds separate for a time—but what goes on in the mind (and heart) when you tear yourself in two? What happens when it all comes crashing down?

  This is Your Brain on Drugs
  Creator: Liz Singh
  This is Your Brain on Drugs is a series of short investigative documentary podcast episodes, each depicting a significant person, event, or story from a lesser-known part of our heritage: The Canadian War on Drugs.

  Lost and Found – A Podcast About Fatherhood
  Creators: Sandro Silva and Sheena Rossiter
  Lost and Found is a five-part narrative documentary podcast where an Afro-Brazilian man, raised by a single mother, discovers the real meaning of fatherhood.

Selected participants joined acclaimed Canadian and international audio creators, executives, and taste makers for workshops, panels and networking events that are sure to enlighten, inspire and help kick-start a career in podcasting.

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