Building a Student Podcast From Scratch
Organisation
The Richmond Audio Project
Role
Founder, Producer & Host
Duration
4 month
Tools & Technologies
DaVinci Resolve
Spotify for Podcasters
Canva
Problem
The university had no student podcast, no format to build on, and no one actively closing the gap between faculty and students on what was actually happening on campus. Information about events and campus life was scattered across emails, notice boards, and word of mouth, with nothing pulling it together in a way students would actually engage with. Nobody had tried building a show to fix that, and there was no established audience to speak of, no listenership, no format, no proof it would even work.
My role
I founded and led Campus as SGA President, owning it end to end. That meant identifying the gap myself, writing scripts, hosting every episode, and inviting faculty guests on to speak directly to students about ongoing events. I also ran the full production pipeline solo, editing in DaVinci Resolve, mixing audio in Fairlight, and handling distribution myself, while balancing this alongside leading a nine person executive team and representing 1,200+ students.
Outcome
Ran for 3 episodes across 4 months, with faculty returning as repeat guests and the show continuing as an established part of student life after the pilot ended.
How i solved it
The first thing I did was talk to people, not about what a podcast should sound like, but about what students actually wanted to know and where they were currently missing it. The answers were consistent. Nobody was checking notice boards. Nobody read every email. Events and announcements were getting lost, not because students didn't care, but because nothing was reaching them in a format they'd actually sit through.
We didn't have a content problem. We had an attention problem wearing an information problem's clothes.
So the format came before anything else. I built the show around conversation, not announcements, faculty guests talking through what was actually happening on campus in a way that felt like a discussion, not a briefing. Scripts were written to sound like a real exchange, not a reading of the notice board. Every episode was produced solo, recorded, edited in DaVinci Resolve, mixed in Fairlight, and put out for students to actually listen to, not just be told about.
We didn't launch everything at once. Early episodes tested different formats and guest types, and I paid attention to which ones people actually finished listening to versus which ones lost people halfway through, the same instinct that shaped the Phero content testing, staying with what wasn't working long enough to find what did.
What shipped
The pilot ran for three episodes, roughly three hours of total airtime, bringing together students, SGA reps, and faculty members who wanted a real way to connect with the student body beyond the usual channels.
What surprised me most was how it spread without any push from me. Professors started noticing the show and sharing it with their own classes, and from there it picked up attention on its own, entirely on the strength of the conversations, not any marketing behind it.
It started as one person doing everything, writing, hosting, editing, producing. Since I've graduated, a volunteer team has taken it over and kept it running, which is the outcome I'm proudest of. It means Campus wasn't just a pilot that worked while I was there, it became something worth continuing without me.
What worked
What worked Starting with real conversations instead of scripts, letting the format grow out of what people actually wanted to talk about, not what I assumed would sound good on a podcast. Booking faculty who wanted to connect, not just fill a guest slot, gave every episode a reason to exist beyond content for content's sake. And going in without a marketing push meant when it did spread, through professors sharing it with their classes, it was proof the show worked, not proof I could promote something.
What I'd Do Differently
Set up a way to actually track listens or engagement from episode one, so growth wasn't something I only noticed anecdotally through professors mentioning it. Bring the volunteer team in earlier rather than after I'd graduated, so the handover wasn't a scramble at the end but something built into the show from the start. And write down the process, the guest outreach, the format decisions, more thoroughly, so whoever picked it up after me had less to reconstruct from scratch.
// Other works
Have a look at my other work
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Joined Phero Perfume when every piece of content was a shot in the dark - no USP, no funnel, no strategy tying any of it together.
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Bridging the Creativity Gap: Reviving Dishoom's Chai Sutta Ritual
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A D&AD New Blood brief for Dishoom, reframing a generic "brand awareness" ask into a cultural revival campaign built around a real Bombay ritual, developed with a team of four for MARK6103.
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@Jay Patel 2026