I am a multidisciplinary Audio Artist, Creative producer, writer, and archivist in training from Stoke Newington, London.
I've worked as a producer on podcasts for the BBC and Spotify, Somerset House and I've produced radio on radio stations like BBC 1Xtra NTS and No Signal.
I have also worked as an Assistant producer on the BBC Sounds Commissioning team and created music and sound design for international Ad campaigns for Just Eat, Absolut vodka, Spotify, and more.
I am also the founder of the award-nominated NELLO Production house.
Nello sits at the intersection of heritage, CULTURAL production, and digital humanities.
Nello’s work focuses on creating digital humanities projects, archival collections, creative productions, exhibitions, workshops, and more.
Podcast theory
Firstly, recording oral history interviews is often much less invasive and more organic than conducting filmed interviews. Over the years of interviewing people, particularly Black people, on both film and audio, I found that people are more likely to open up and delve deeper into their history if they feel like they are not being watched.
Secondly, many people included in the series have faced the impact of prejudiced anti-Black media, which distorted and continues to distort the lives of those involved in the Black liberation struggle (for more on this, see Wilderson, 2014).
Our aim is for our work to be presented directly to our target audience, which is best described by Dr. Robin J Hayes’ “Diaspora Underground.” In Love for Liberation: African Independence, Black Power, and a Diaspora Underground, Hayes describes the “Diaspora underground” as:
“A geography of spaces, but it’s also a space time, right? So it is a physical space, but it’s also a conception of the past, present, and future. So when we talk about a Diaspora underground, we understand where our traditions of resistance and revolution come from, how they’re impacting where we are right now. And what is our vision for a future? So that is what I mean by underground; it is the geographic spaces in which we connect across nation-state boundaries. Right? It is Brixton, it is Harlem, it is Algiers, in the 60s and early 70s. And it is also a sense of time in the traditions of resistance and rebellion, that connect us past, present and future”
Dr. Robin J Hayes interview with the authors of Assata’s Chant and Other Histories, 2020
For us, the Diaspora underground is the perfect articulation of our target audience. The traditional social grade target audience metric is more suited for immediate gratification and short-term listener targets for quarterly goals. As well as being an engaging piece of audio, we are hoping this series will act as a resource now and in the future for historians, educators, students, and the Diaspora underground at large to engage with these histories.
(Extracts from An Editor’s Introduction to Assata’s Chant and Other Histories)
Podcast practice
“Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.” - Assata Shakur
Small Axe (2020)
Format : 2 part archive led conversation
Description : “Throughout the conversation Weyland and Kehinde will listen to archive clips and interviews from contributors to provide some wider historical context to the story of the UK Black Power Movement”
Production deadlines, COVID and reshoots led to a change in the format in the final weeks of production.
Taking the themes of Steve McQueen's multi Award winning Small Axe film series, The Small Axe podcast tells the everyday stories of Black Britons through generations and shines a light on those imagining a better future.
Role : Lead producer + host on Ep 1&2, series assistant producer + research producer
Make IT PLAIN PODCAST W PROFESSOR KEHINDE ANDREWS ( ongoing)
Make It Plain is a Weekly Black Studies podcast hosted by Black Studies Professor Kehinde Andrews.
As a professor at Birmingham City University (BCU) he co-led with Dr. Dionne Taylor the set-up of the first and only award-winning Black Studies BA + MA program in Europe. He is the author of "Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century" (2018), "The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World" (2021), and "The Psychosis of Whiteness: Surviving the Insanity of a Racist World" out in Sept 2023.
Executive Production, Audio Editing, Mixing and Music
Assata’s Chant and Other Histories
(2022-)
ASSATA’S CHANT AND OTHER HISTORIES IS A MULTIMEDIA ARCHIVE PROJECT CONSISTING OF AN AWARD NOMINATED AUDIO SERIES, EXHIBITIONS AND WORKSHOPS.
This project fuses visual art, interviews, readings, immersive storytelling, music and sound design to tell an anthology of histories from the black liberation movement with particular focus on Assata Shakur but including the likes of Altheia Jones Lecointe, Fred Hampton, Mutulu Shakur and Sundiata Acoli and more
how did we get here?
The ideation of the project began in 2020 as I was working on the Small Axe podcast which a companion podcast for Steve McQueen’s award winning film anthology of the same name.
I wrote the first pitch deck for it in November 2020 in Barbados.
pre-production
Over the course of the research period of this project, I spent roughly £800 on books and countless hours reading, interviewing, and combing through archives – in the hopes that those after us who are also interested in this history do not need to do so to understand one of the most crucial periods in the US and world history.
Format
The medium of podcasting is a powerful tool for archiving and distributing oral history, specifically the history of those who have been marginalized and oppressed by the state. This format is particularly suited to telling the stories of people like Assata and her comrades for a variety of reasons.
Firstly, the process of recording oral history interviews is often much less invasive and more organic than the process of conducting filmed interviews....
Secondly, many people included in the series have faced the impact of prejudiced anti-Black media, which distorted and continues to distort the lives of those involved in the Black liberation struggle (for more on this, see Wilderson, 2014).
We have used the anthology format as we believe it will best serve the history and the audience. This is not OUR version of these events. As often as possible, we “return to the source,” be that speeches, essays, and other writings of those central to the histories. We intend to add to this source a number of interviews we have conducted with ex-Panthers, academicians, and others involved in the Black Liberation Movement.
Episode 9
Format : Audio documentary
Contributors: 2 guests + 1 voice over actor
This episode, focuses on Connie Matthews the Jamaican, international coordinator of the BPP.
But what is the BPP…
Located in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle - Wade specializes in event, performance and portrait photography. Robert Wade's editorial and commercial photographs have been published in magazines including Art Forum, Art in America, the Seattle Times, SF Gate and GQ, and his event photography clients include numerous for-profit and non-profit organizations.
from the Black Panther Newspaper published July 16th 1969
Dr Ethelene Whitmire is a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison affiliated with the departments of African American Studies, German, Nordic, and Slavic, and Gender & Women’s Studies. She received an American-Scandinavian Foundation fellowship and a Lois Roth Endowment grant to support this project. She was also a 2016-2017 Fulbright Scholar and visiting professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Transnational American Studies.
Music : Jah Knows by Teshay Makeda
Written by Teshay Makeda , James Julian Shephard Calvin Bennion
Album Omega Mother Goddess
Podcast theory
“My audio practice involves a multidisciplinary layering of archival exploration, digital humanities, oral history, storytelling, audio production and exhibitions as a means of analysing and Interrogating history to make sense of the modern world around us. While developing this intuitive practice I became particularly interested in the interplay of pedagogy, oral history archival activation and audio production. At the core of my practice is an exploration of this interplay through exhibitions, archival workshops and collaborative production with young people and those in academic fields.” -
Extract from upcoming Journal Article in Radio Doc Reviews by Weyland Mckenzie - Witter
Podcast practice
Beyond the broadcast.
Oakland California, August 2023
Interviews produced in the creation of the project have been deposited at Freedom Archives in Berkeley California for long term preservation
In August 2023, in collaboration with FAM Oakland we brought the Assata’s Chant and Other Histories Audiovisual experience to Oakland California.
On the 28th of June 2024, we presented our Assata’s Chant and Other Histories collection for the 3rd time in an audio-visual exhibition at Black Eats Festival hosted by Woolwhich Works
