Grant awarded to: Hannah Loy
Ymddiried’s Contribution: £1,100
Ymddiried Media Grants Cymru gave me one of the best starts I can think of for launching my audio production company. Back in 2014, whilst at the BBC, I made my first ever radio documentary called The Lost Women of British Jazz. This documentary went on to be nominated for a Prix Europa award in the Audio Music category. During my week in Berlin at the festival, my eyes were opened to the value of spending the time to listen and evaluate the work of productions from across Europe. I never forgot the experience and went on to produce more documentaries for Radio 4, Radio Wales, the World Service and eventually my own BBC podcast series called The Aberystwyth Book Club on BBC Sounds.
Fast forward ten years and after leaving the BBC in 2024, I’ve set up my own audio production company, based near Aberystwyth, called Read the Room Productions. I officially launched at the beginning of October 2024 and applied for the grant to return to the Prix Europa Broadcasting Festival (the dates happened to fall at the end of my first week). It felt like a stroke of serendipity to be awarded the grant and travel back 10 years later with my brand-new production company up and running.
On the first day you are invited to register at The Haus des Rundfunks, where you receive your pass for the week and a huge guidebook listing all the shortlisted productions across audio, visual and digital. On the first two days I decided to be an ‘observer’, meaning I could listen / watch across all categories. I mainly focussed my time on listening to the Audio Documentary and Audio Fiction submissions. On the Wednesday and Thursday l was a member of the jury for the Audio Music Category. This means you must listen to all the productions in the category as they are played out in the room, be a part of the discussion at the end of each day and are given voting rights. Although these two days were certainly intense, I enjoyed listening to so many different treatments of music programming, from podcasts, to chat shows, to concerts, to documentaries. On the final day we were all invited to an emotional awards ceremony where the winners of each category were revealed and we were given the chance to celebrate with everyone we had met over the week.
Thanks to Ymddiried, I met top-class producers from across Europe, as well as having the opportunity to listen intently to their productions and discuss their process. Not only did it give me a huge amount of inspiration and insight, but it also gave me a network of people in the industry who I trust and admire. The opportunity has ignited ambitious plans and now I’m back in Wales I can’t wait to start building these into the future of Read the Room Productions.