“Please be aware this event is taking place outside on the South Downs Way path. Please dress appropriately for the weather.”
I am on the South Downs Way path. And… alas, I am not dressed appropriately for the weather. Typical Londoner.
I’m here at the inaugural Tremula Festival, a new audio-focused festival celebrating the relationship between the audio, nature and the outdoors. Podcasts about the outdoors have been growing in popularity over the last few years and come in different forms – from audio soundscapes helping us to drift off to sleep or de-stress us during a busy work day, to nature storytelling podcasts, transporting us to remote locations we have dreamt about visiting. These shows particularly helped a lot of people when the pandemic hit and all of us were not able to access the country as often as we may have liked, but there hasn’t been a festival that celebrates and amplifies this growing genre… until now.
This new three day festival put together by Francesca Turauskis, featured talks, workshops, discussion and walks. My day started in Southease, in the South Downs, to experience a live recording of Folk on Foot, the hit podcast by the broadcaster and former BBC executive Matthew Bannister and producer Natalie Steed.
Each episode of their podcast features folk musicians being interviewed by Bannister whilst on a country ramble, resulting in a part walk, part music performance and part chat show. Brighton-based Bird in the Belly were the guests this time, who performed several folk songs at various spots across the South Downs, in front of the podcast’s first live in person audience of about twenty people.
“We’re introducing you to the joy that we get every time,” said Bannister.
It was also a first hand experience of the challenges that can come up during a podcast recording in the great outdoors. During our hours or so rambling we are interrupted by the sounds of airplanes, cyclists asking to make way, a bell warning of upcoming trains at a railway crossing and a needy and persistent tractor (“he’s out for revenge,” one onlooker said.)
But all of this was navigated by Bannister and Steed with ease, who stopped and started their recording accordingly and described the idyllic surroundings near the River Ouse for listeners with wit and warmth. At one point, as the folk band were about to perform outside the local church, there was a threat of a worker with a grass strimmer. Yet, after he was notified of what was going on, he happily downed tools because he wanted to hear their performance too. Snacks were also provided by the blackberries on a nearby path.
The festival continued that afternoon in the city of Brighton with live podcast recordings in an auditorium, compered by Extraordinary Ordinary You host Frankie Dewar. The Earth, Sea, Love Podcast by Dr Sheree Black featured a discussion with cultural activist Alinah Azadeh, touching on the destruction of plaques on a walking trail that Azadeh led and curated on the South Downs. We later heard one of the recordings from the “We Hear You Now,” which you can still listen to at each location on the trail.
There was also an hour of storytelling. An experimental audio documentary called Saltwater Soul by James Trice was played, which highlighted the joy of wild sea swimming, the connection to the oceans and the ongoing activism to protect these areas from sewage. Kathi Kamleitner from Wild for Scotland performed a spoken word about the benefits of slow travel over a recording of nature on a Hebridean island, transporting you to that location. And Turauskis did a powerful performance of her own work ‘My Babica’s Footsteps,’ which featured reflections on Kamleitner's granddaughter and their stories of being refugees whilst on an extensive hike.
These were only some of the talks, with two days of sessions tapping into how best to record non-human sound and a special walk and the best way of conducting interviews whilst in the great outdoors.
The festival is not over. From Saturday 28th September you can join the podcast digitally, with talks from all the other sessions that took place, which will be shared on the Tremula Podcast Network Instagram account.
