Axel Kacoutié was a member of Poet in the City Producers 2017. Since then, he's gone on to work for the Guardian and win awards for his audio work.

"I discovered the Producers scheme during Under The Skin, a Poet in the City event at St. Paul’s Cathedral in 2016. While on the scheme, I was working at radio station LBC as a studio manager. I was waking up at 4AM to run the 6AM breakfast show, so there was lots to juggle! I have a music background and enjoy telling stories, so working there was a good collective exercise in something I wanted to do more of.

As part of the Producers scheme, there was the opportunity to record a podcast, which I jumped at, and with a small team, we recorded Searching for Utopia.

When the Guardian were starting to put their podcast together, the team reached out to me to see if I would be interested as they loved the work I’d done with the Producers and on the side. Not too long after the interview I found out I got the job and the rest is history, as they say! 

Starting there was such a steep learning curve, with a lot of pressure and trust placed in me. My role involves mixing the final edits handed over by the producers, selecting the music and, with sound design, lift the episode to enhance the emotional experience of the story. Collaborating with Guardian journalists, we to go behind the scenes to break down and explain their findings on news stories and investigations. My proudest achievement has been creating the Brexit ‘sound’, used when the results were coming in from the referendum.

If it hadn’t been for Producers, I wouldn’t have been as informed or even confident enough to think I’d have a chance with the role at the Guardian. It’s helped me develop my own audio artistry too, and I can't wait to share what I've been up to very soon."

Explore Axel Kacoutié's work at: www.axelkacoutie.com and his audio work at: https://soundcloud.com/axelkacoutie

The podcast team
From left to right: Amica Sciortino Nowlan,
Louisa Danquah, Axel Kacoutié, Milicia Cortanovacki,
Ariel Silverman, Olivia Amura.

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