Skip to main content
UCL logo

Podcasting

Oh Pod! x UCL

Oh Pod! x UCL is a mental health podcast series, aiming to develop trust through honest discussions with marginalised east London communities and researchers. Episodes focus on conditions that are often taboo in ethnic communities, such as mental health and autism. The series is presented by Shakira Crawford and Iman Issa-Ismail, who have conversations with academics exploring health misconceptions.

Shoba and UCL Senior Research Fellow in Mechanical and Environmental Engineering Rupy Matharu were awarded a UCL Community Engagement Seed fund in 2022 to build on the participatory photography project 'Diverse Voices' and develop a podcast. The aim of the project was to work with multiple public and professional partners to achieve the UCL East principles of collaboration, co-production and mutual benefit through creative means. We built on existing relationships from our research and created a new partnership with the Waltham Forest Future Formed and Oh Pod! teams.

We aimed to develop a co-produced podcast series that provides a platform to open up the dialogue between academics, policy-makers, local and national government, research funders and people from east London communities. The podcast took the next steps from the photography project by engaging discussion from multiple perspectives about key health concerns of east London communities, and relationships with the NHS, academics and government.

‘By collaborating directly with people living in east London we hope to shine a spotlight on the experiences and perspectives of lesser-heard communities'

Activities

This was a multi-phase project involving the following activities:

  1. In-person half-day workshop to brainstorm podcast topics with ‘Frames of Mind: Empowering communities through creative digital media'.

  2. UCL academics were recruited as guest speakers and preparatory meetings were held with guests

  3. Podcast production by Shakira Crawford from the Oh Pod! team

  4. Video recording at Outset Studios in Hackney

Podcast episodes are linked below: