Angat Bayi, a political empowerment program that builds the capacity of women leaders on feminist leadership, approached us to co-produce a feminist podcast that complements their program. Together, we developed and produced Chikang Bayi, a podcast that aims to make feminism accessible to the public through engaging, illuminating, and inspiring conversations that anchor “larger than life” issues and concepts to personal stories.
Balancing accessibility and feminist critical lens
Chikang Bayi is a combination of the words, chika (chee-kah), a colloquial Filipino term that is interchangeably used to refer to stories, usually told in confidence, and the act of storytelling itself, and bayi (ba-yi), the Bisaya word for woman.
True to its name, each Chikang Bayi episode features a group of guests exchanging their personal takes on a feminist issue. By bringing the level of discourse to the personal level, the episodes are made more relatable to the listeners while simultaneously arousing their feminist consciousness.
Participatory podcast production
At the onset, we wanted the show to be a platform for the voices and narratives of women and LGBTQI people. Guests from diverse backgrounds were invited to share their stories, thoughts, and experiences on the topic of the episodes. However, we felt that there is room to make the podcast even more participatory.
After three (3) episodes, we prototyped a system where allied organizations could set their own agenda and implement their own creative strategies in Chikang Bayi. For the special episode in commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (IDEVAW), we invited Time’s Up Ateneo (TUA), a community engaged in survivor-centered, trauma-informed advocacy, as guest producer. FemmeLab took on the role of a technical support provider by giving initial briefing and assistance in editing and production of promotional materials. Meanwhile, Time’s Up Ateneo provided overall direction for the episode by writing the script and supervising the recording, post-production, and promotions.
We replicated this process with Gandang Pilipina for Episode 5: Magandang Simula and with Young Feminists Collective for Episode 7: Generation F. We find that the process required us to be flexible as each group operates differently. To date, we have released eight (8) episodes, four (4) of them with guest producers.
Producing Chikang Bayi this way would not be possible without the solidarity of our co-producer, Angat Bayi. In a media context where the bottomline are the number of “likes” and “follows” no matter the method; they were supportive in our quest to discover ways of making podcast production more equitable, enjoyable, and meaningful for everyone involved.
Follow Chikang Bayi on Spotify and on Facebook to get updates on our new releases.
Partners: Angat Bayi, Canada Fund for Local Initiatives, UP Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, Time’s Up Ateneo, Gandang Pilipina, Young Feminists Collective
Project duration: July 2020-July 2021