Spotify announced a slate of programs designed to create opportunities in audio media for students at Spelman College during the streaming service’s first-ever Creator Day, which was held at the school on Monday afternoon. About 150 Spelman students and staff gathered in the school’s Wellness Center to hear from popular content creators, and to learn more about the new partnership and how to develop their own podcast.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
“Spelman is definitely an institution that inspires you to give back however you can,” said Kristin Jarrett, a Spelman alumna and Spotify’s Equity & Impact lead. “I never thought I would have an opportunity to come back here and do this, so it’s a special moment. When we were thinking about the idea to expand to HBCUs in general, we thought about the intersection of young Black women’s voices and really wanted to amplify that. Spelman is the oldest institution for Black women in the country, so it just felt really aligned.”
Monday’s event was part of Spotify’s NextGen program, an initiative that aims to grow the culture of podcasts on college campuses. The partnership was officially announced in November and is sponsored by Spotify’s Creator Equity Fund, a $100 million investment that promotes audio creators from historically underrepresented demographics. Other schools included in NextGen are University of Southern California, University of Pennsylvania, and New York University. Spelman College is the first HBCU to offer NextGen programming, which will include:
- A scholarship for five current first-year Spelman students with a 3.0 GPA who want to pursue a career in audio media. Each recipient will get $10,000 during their sophomore, junior and senior years.
- An audio-first curriculum that will help students to record and edit audio and produce a podcast at the end of the semester instead of writing a paper or making a presentation to reflect their what they’ve learned.
- -An incubator lab program that includes a week filled with interactive workshops that will help students launch their own podcasts.
This is the first time that a scholarship program and a lab were included in NextGen programming. Applications for the Spotify NextGen Scholarship Program are available starting today at spelman.scholarships.ngwebsolutions.com (May 31 is the scholarship deadline for the next academic year, according to the site) Recipients will be announced later this year. The lab program will start on March 27, but students can reserve their spot by visiting lifeatspotify.com/students. The audio-first curriculum will be open to more students during the next enrollment period.
Michelle Hite, an associate professor of English at Spelman, is currently piloting the audio-first curriculum in her 16-student class on Emmett Till. The course, titled “Emmett Till: The Cultural Afterlife of an American Boy,” examines Till’s life beyond his death and prompts students to use audio as a primary tool to share those stories. Hite’s students are divided into three groups to work on the audio elements. For the final assignment, they’ll produce a 30-minute podcast.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
“(Using audio), they’re going to tell stories that are about these markers that are along the Emmett Till trail,” Hite said. “A part of what we teach at Spelman is loving Blackness as political resistance, so the idea is that we’re rooted in stories that are not about race but about loving Blackness ... so it’s about Black life beyond grievance and it’s about how we flourish. When you take that lens and apply to Emmett Till, what are we missing of his story? Spotify is helping students tell that story.”
While it’s unclear what the next iteration of the audio-first curriculum will be, Spotify plans to offer one audio course per semester.
“That is what an audio-first curriculum can do — expand the way that you think about Black life and provide you with an opportunity to hear what it sounds like for people who love Blackness to reflect upon Black life, so whenever there is an investment in that kind of inquiry, then audio-first is a lovely place to be,” Hite said.
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Spelman’s Creator Day also featured a crash course on making a podcast, remarks from U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams and a fireside chat with popular content creators Wunmi Bello, Rickey Thompson and Denzel Dion. Bello co-hosts the Spotify Original “Nailing It,” a podcast that tackles life, relationships and womanhood while its hosts record inside a nail salon. Real-life besties and social media influencers Thompson and Dion host “We Said What We Said”, another Spotify Original centered on pop culture. The pair share more than 7 million followers on Instagram.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
“Have fun,” Thompson said about advice he’d give to aspiring content creators. “Definitely be yourself and never doubt yourself, honestly. That was one big thing I was going through when I first started, but when I stopped doubting things, I skyrocketed.”
Elizabeth Gowans, a senior at Spelman, is the director of The Blue Record Podcast, a social justice podcast that uses Black feminism to explore the gap between Spelman’s past and present. Launched in 2020, The Blue Record is the only official podcast for Spelman.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Gowans said she’s glad that the school is expanding its efforts and investment in audio media. She hopes it will help her podcast receive more funding.
“Even when we have gotten funding from groups, it takes a while for it to trickle down to us to buy the equipment, so I feel that for Black people who may not have as much money or not know which equipment is good to use for producing, that can be an issue,” the 22-year-old said. “Audio transcription software usually costs money, editing software costs money, mics and headphones cost money, all of that.”
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Kayli Joy Cooper, a freshman at Spelman, creates and distributes self-care kits to under-sheltered teenagers through her nonprofit Girl Well. She wants to apply what she learned from Creator Day to her organization and has plans to sign up for the scholarship program.
“I’m really interested in finding ways to reimagine self-care, and I think one of those ways is making self-care accessible online and starting a podcast has been on my mind for few years, so I’m really happy to see how Spotify can help me with that.”
For more information about Spotify’s partnership with Spelman, visit shorturl.at/rIMRX
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