While it’s easier than ever to create a podcast, it’s still a process. Gaining access to gear, recording studios, and editing resources is difficult for anyone, especially if you’re part of a marginalized community. But removing barriers can increase accessibility, and that’s why we started our Spotify for Podcasters initiative Making Space. Aiming to elevate underrepresented creators, we partner with local businesses in marginalized communities to make studio-quality podcasting gear available for free.
Over the past year, we’ve joined forces with local inclusive businesses—Greenville, South Carolina–based plant store Savereign, Gainesville, Florida–based café Curia on the Drag, and Atlanta-based plant shop/cafe Nourish Botanica—to provide safe places for storytellers to create and help build a more diverse ecosystem of podcast creators.
But this month, we’re heading to Brazil and bringing our Making Space initiative to creators outside the U.S. for the first time. We’re inaugurating Seu Espaço, located in São Paulo, as the country’s first fully equipped podcast studio for creators. Even better, recording time can be reserved for free by established and aspiring podcasters alike. To make this a reality, we partnered with and housed the studio in restaurant and culinary school Da Quebrada – Gastronomia Periférica, a community-oriented business that seeks to transform the lives of people on the outskirts of the city through plant-based gastronomy.
“Spotify is constantly seeking ways to support new and emerging voices, and this free studio is an example of how we are making podcasting accessible to anyone, anywhere,” said Barbara Zamberlan, Spotify’s Creator Partnerships Lead in Brazil. “We want to encourage more creators to try podcasting and provide them with a safe place for their voices to be heard, contributing to the diversification of the podcasting ecosystem.”
To learn more about the restaurant’s mission and what excited its team most about offering a creator studio within its walls, For the Record spoke with Gastronomia Periférica chef and cofounder Edson Leite.
Can you tell us a little bit about the philosophy behind Da Quebrada – Gastronomia Periférica?
Gastronomia Periférica is a socially-oriented business. We make money by directly impacting people’s lives in positive ways. In addition to being a restaurant, Da Quebrada – Gastronomia Periférica is a culinary school, and our students are paid interns while they’re enrolled here.
Gastronomia Periférica also runs several other spaces throughout Brazil, providing gastronomy training for people from the outskirts—mostly Black men and women, as well as mothers.
What are some of the ways you serve the community?
What I’m most proud of with Gastronomia Periférica is how it’s affected the real transformation of life in the outskirts. I think that when we feel good, we do good. Nowadays, we can point to the east and south zones of São Paulo and say, “We’ve changed the reality of these neighborhoods by promoting and providing professional training.”
Why is it important for there to be an accessible podcasting hub in São Paulo?
Da Quebrada is a quilombo, a denomination for communities of Black enslaved peoples who resisted the slavery regime that prevailed in Brazil for over 300 years. We live in opposing territory, but we bring an aquilombamento—a spirit of bringing Black people together—with Spotify and this studio so people have access. We want people from the outskirts to understand that they can be anywhere, even in a podcast that was created with first-class equipment. And with Seu Espaço, we want them to feel like they’re in a space that embraces them. We want to give the opportunity for those voices to be amplified. Hopefully we’ll get a real sense of that impact when we see a lot of Black creators from the favelas using the place and saying, “Check out my podcast on Spotify, I’ve recorded it in a place where I felt truly at home.”
This Making Space location was made possible by the Creator Equity Fund, a multi-year investment that showcases and elevates underrepresented artists and creators through new and existing initiatives. To check available recording times for Seu Espaço, click here.
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