On Sunday 7 July, Piacenza returns to the national spotlight, with the third edition of “Il Pod – Italian Podcast Awards”, the national award for the best podcasts.
It will not just be an awards ceremony but a day of workshops, meetings, presentations and masterclasses dedicated to the most exciting form of communication in recent years. For the first time the event will be in Piacenza, thanks to the support of the Piacenza and Vigevano Foundation, the Municipality of Piacenza and the Piacenza Theater Foundation, and together with the entire Piacenza Culture Network. And with Amazon Music and Iren as official award partners and the partnership of Audible and Spotify.
WHERE IT TAKES PLACE
The spaces of the Open Laboratory – Ex Chiesa del Carmine and the courtyard of the Palazzo Farnese in Piacenza will welcome the protagonists of this edition, organized by the philosophers and writers, founders of the Tlon cultural dissemination project, Maura Gancitano and Andrea Colamedici, with the artistic direction by author and podcast producer Fabio Ragazzo. This year too, the event confirms itself as a point of reference for the consolidation of the professional podcasting network and an opportunity to meet and inspire the increasingly growing podcast audience.
award-winning podcasters
There will be 18 podcasters awarded, one for each of the categories in the competition. In addition to these, 4 super prizes will be awarded: the Podcast of the Year, the Amazon Music Audience Award after the great success of the last edition, the Green Award supported by Iren, the one for the best Indie Podcast 2024 and, new for this edition, the Piacenza Awardestablished by the city called the Primogenita which is hosting the event for the first time and assigned by the Municipality to the Podcast Rivelazione which had the most impact during the year.
talk e workshop
Not just an award ceremony but a day of celebration of the most interesting content that wants to enhance and contribute to the growth of this medium. During the event, in fact, there will be spaces entirely dedicated to podcasters and the story of their work in creating content, through talks, workshops and presentations, events that will be attended by journalists, writers, actors and comedians such as Stefano Nazzi, Chiara Tagliaferri, Nicola Lagioia, Debora Campanella, Pablo Trincia, Daniele Tinti and Stefano Rapone, Francesca Zanni, Rossella Pivanti and many others.
Among the new features for 2024, there is also a session organized in collaboration with Spotify, partner of the event, dedicated to all those who want to learn how to make the most of the platform, from how the rankings work, to interactive tools and monetization.
“podcast as an art form”
“Podcasts are a form of art, culture and entertainment in which the richness of the content is combined with immediacy and freedom of use which make them an extremely contemporary dissemination and in-depth tool – underlines the mayor Katia Tarasconi -. There could not have been a better preview, therefore, for the second edition of the Contemporary Thinking Festival. Being the venue for the Il Pod awards event means, for Piacenza, having an extraordinary opportunity to listen and discuss with authoritative personalities, intellectual and creative figures of the highest profile, in a day that will involve citizens and visitors, giving the city another special stop in a summer to remember”.
“towards the festival of contemporary THINKING”
“Hosting the third edition of the national award dedicated to the best Italian pod casts in Piacenza – added Roberto Reggi, president of the Piacenza and Vigevano Foundation – is the best way to officially kick off our journey towards the second edition of the Festival of Thinking contemporary, which will be held in Piacenza from 19 to 23 September 2024. Statistics tell us that podcast users mainly belong to the new generations, but that the more adult audience is also progressively growing, in line with an ever-increasing diffusion of this medium. With the Italian podcast Awards we can contribute to the diffusion of the podcasting network, offering the city a structured event with which to learn more about a tool that gives us the opportunity to inform ourselves, learn more, reflect and experiment with new contents and perspectives. In short, another space for culture and discussion, which are indispensable tools for the growth of the territory.”
“the cultural value of podcasts”
Rewarding the best Italian podcasts means recognizing the great cultural value of an art form that fascinates an increasingly wider audience – explains Andrea Colamedici, creator and curator of Il Pod, and philosophical director of the Festival del Pensare Contemporaneo – thus contributing to strengthening the community of listeners and podcasters”.
I PREMI
There were 864 podcasts registered for this 3rd edition of Il Pod – Italian Podcast Awards. Among these, 136 finalists were selected, divided into 18 thematic categories in competition. Each category – Wellness, Business, Comedy, Culture, Diversity, Documentary, Host, News, Indie Information, Indie Entertainment, Indie Narration, Green, Talk, Sound Design, True Crime, Science, Script and Sport – will have its winner who will compete for the most prestigious award of all: Podcast of the Year, awarded by the jury to the best podcast published in 2023. Other super awards will also follow: among the new features, the Piacenza Award and the Green Award supported by Iren; the Amazon Music Audience Award also returns, selected by the community of listeners who can vote online for their favorite podcast; and the Indie Podcast of the Year dedicated to the best independent podcast, chosen from the winners of the 3 categories dedicated to Indies (information, entertainment and narration).
THE PROGRAM
The day of July 7 will open at 9 am with 2 workshops dedicated to those who want to learn something more than how to actually create a podcast. Followed by a speech by Nicola Lagioia (10:15 am) who, starting from the most ancient forms of narration and orality, will lead us through the potential of the podcast as a communication tool, capable of conveying complex content in a simple way and fully responding to our human need to tell stories. Afterwards, at 11 am, the writer Chiara Tagliaferri, together with the founder and CEO of the storielibere.fm platform Rossana De Michele and the philosopher Maura Gancitano, will discuss the genesis of the Morgana podcast, telling anecdotes and listening again to excerpts of the show that has now become a cult. This will be an opportunity to remember the co-author of the podcast and writer Michela Murgia. It will then be the turn of the workshop by Spotify (12:00), dedicated to “Spotify for Podcasters” the tool that allows audio content creators to edit, publish and create a community around their podcast. A meeting dedicated to those who want to discover the best strategies to launch their audio content in the current competitive landscape.
For the first time this year, some selected students of the La Content Academy school will be able to present a pitch of their podcast project in front of the main decision makers in the sector: a unique opportunity to see your dream come true (12.45 pm). The afternoon will be entirely dedicated to the celebration of some of the winning podcasts of the last edition, with exclusive interviews, panels and live with the protagonists who have best managed to capture the attention of the public and win the appreciation of professionals in the sector with their exclusive stories or their captivating formats. At 4 pm, the dialogue between Maura Gancitano and Valeria Montebello, author and narrator of the bold Il sesso degli altri, winner 2023 in the Well-being category. Afterwards, at 4.45 pm, we will be able to attend a talk with the journalist Francesca Zanni, voice of the self-produced investigative podcast Rumore (Best Indie Award 2023), together with Riccardo Noury, spokesperson for Amnesty International Italy.
Not to be missed, at 5:30 pm, the presentation of the Audible Original podcast Dalla parte sbagliata, with the author Debora Campanella and the journalist and podcaster Pablo Trincia. At 6:15 pm we will be able to listen to Daniele Tinti and Stefano Rapone, iconic protagonists of Tintoria (winner of the 2023 Audience Award). At 7 pm the live show lo ero il milanese by the actor Mauro Pescio will be staged, author of the podcast of the same name, winner in the Best Documentary 2023 category. Finally, we will move to the courtyard of the historic Palazzo Farnese for the long-awaited final awards ceremony, which will be introduced by the exclusive opening masterclass by Stefano Nazzi, journalist and well-known voice of the viral podcast Indagini. The evening will be hosted by Marco Carrara and Maura Gancitano. Accompanying all the meetings with live music, the multi-instrumentalist and musical artist NAIP, registered as Michelangelo Mercuri, who will create the basis for each intervention.
