Vote For Our SXSW Proposal: Trauma-Informed Storytelling In Podcasts

SXSW Sydney will be held on the 15-22nd October 2023. This week-long event brings together tech and innovation, games, music and screen industries for unexpected discoveries.

Our LiSTNR Crime Team have pitched a session on trauma-informed storytelling, based on learnings we gleaned from producing The Children In The Pictures podcast.

How To Vote:

1. Head to our proposal page on the SXSW Sydney website.

2. Click on the ‘Vote’ button in the top right hand corner

Voting closes on April 11th.

About Our Session:

The Children in the Pictures podcast reveals how Australia and the world is facing an epidemic of child abuse online, and how victims-survivors, families and investigators are affected globally.

We wanted the podcast to be many things: robust in its journalism, sensitive, careful in its handling of very disturbing material, trauma-informed, victim-focused, but also an eminently binge-able story with a sound world you could sink into. As you might imagine, this was tricky.

In this session, you’ll hear from documentary maker Akhim Dev, who spent six years following the elite child abuse investigators Taskforce Argos, and executive producer Belinda Lopez, whose team was tasked with creating a podcast that balanced a sound-rich experience, with rigorous journalism, and the dark nature of the content.

Parents and experts in child sexual abuse prevention have praised the podcast for its powerful examination of this difficult subject. It became the #1 Spotify True Crime podcast in Australia and featured in Apple’s Best Shows of 2022, in the category ‘Shows that Gripped and Thrilled Us’.

The Children In The Pictures is an illuminating series that calls on all of us to bring this issue out of the shadows, to protect our children from harm.

Listen To The Children In The Pictures:

Australian documentary-maker Akhim Dev follows the Queensland Police investigation of a notorious child exploitation website. This 8 part series is a powerful examination into how child abuse has become endemic online, and what we can all do to fight it. 

LiSTNR is THE home of true crime podcasts. Download the app and listen for free.