Wow. Where do I begin?
Me on the Upload Festival set in Bristol.
We took an idea. Made it work. It’s as simple as that.
Except it’s not as simple as that because we had zero budget and just a few weeks to make an incredible moment happen where we brought together all of the BBC’s 39 local radio stations for an hour each night across a whole weekend and showcased talent from every corner of England… On the radio, and live streamed it on social media, on the BBC website and on the iPlayer! No pressure!
Oh, yeah. One other thing. We had to build an entire studio that was suitable for radio and video somewhere on a BBC site and make it work - including making all the clever tech work. Plus it was all built from scratch ‘cus no one else had ever done this kinda thing before. Not forgetting that all this had to happen in a socially distant way because we’re in the middle of a global pandemic.
That’s where this talented lot (and me) came in.
Left to right: Jess Rudkin (editor), Dean Poolman (senior producer and director), Lillie-Mae Stubbs (social media and vision mixing), Alex Howick (social media and content management), Chris Lane (broadcast engineer for vision and systems), Ian Hodson (broadcast engineer - radio) and Adam Crowther (presenter).
As you know, Upload started as an idea at BBC Radio Bristol and it quickly gained traction and has been rolled out across England. During lockdown we’ve run schemes on air to help bring creatives together. Anyone who is making, creating and doing stuff can get their stuff on air. People have been making stuff that’s been reflective of life in lockdown, the coronavirus, black lives matter, mental health, the list goes on. We knew that people wanted a way of coming together in a moment. Upload Festival was a way of us doing that, but we had to make it virtual. We couldn’t bring people together physically. No way. Not with everything going on.
So we embarked on a mission to build a virtual festival for people to be a part of. We opened the uploaders across the country for creatives to send their stuff into their local BBC radio station for the chance to get their work showcased on a national platform. We were blown away. Genuinely blown away.
Jess Rudkin (the big boss and creator of Upload) started forming an A-Team and coordinating a plan. Firstly, Dean Poolman was roped in ‘cus if you need something planning then Dean is 1 million percent the guy you need. His attention to detail and ability to bring everything together is astounding. Then Chris Lane was on the hit-list. Getting things live streamed onto various platforms on a shoe-string budget but to look amazing is a challenge and Chris was the man to make it happen and he worked quickly to build a broadcast/livestream system from scratch right away. Lillie-Mae Stubbs and Alex Howick are BBC Radio Bristol’s social whizz-kids and created animated graphics and video content to bring everything together during the broadcast. Ian Hodson is BBC Radio Bristol’s broadcast engineer and what he doesn’t know about sound, isn’t worth knowing. But that wasn’t all… we had Upload presenters and BBC producers at 39 radio stations across England listening to hundreds and thousands of uploads sent in via bbc.co.uk/upload and whittling down the best of the best and the most creative creations from keen poets, comedians, stand ups, writers, bloggers and vloggers to help bring the festival together.
Shortlisting the content was tough. We had three hours of the festival to fill, but way more than that uploaded. The teams across England did amazingly well to shortlist the uploads and it’s worth noting that hundreds of those who just missed out will still be used on Upload shows on their local stations.
During the weekend festival we knew we wanted to have a line up of incredible workshops that people could connect with and learn and take something away from. Writing for comedy, sketch-writing and an incredible Q&A with a panel of comedians including Rosie Jones and Mark Olver were the workshops from our comedy tent. We also had creative writing sessions too!
I’m proud to be part of Upload. I’m proud that people can send their stuff in to the BBC and we can play it out on the radio. On the BBC. I can’t stress enough that if you’re creating stuff (poetry, podcasts, fiction, comedy, blogs or vlogs) we’d love to hear your stuff on the BBC! Head to the website bbc.co.uk/upload to find out all you need to know, including some top tips for recording using your smartphone, what file types you can submit and see examples of some of the other things we’ve featured.