I’ve been looking into creating a podcast to market my creativity and passion for interior design and soft furnishings and sewing skills, cushions, slipcovers, and curtain making, seasonal decorating services for businesses and Christmas tree decorating and photography and have discovered Paragon Creative Studios And Leicester Podcast Studio as two places who may be able to help me bring my vision to life.

There are two creative studios in Leicester I have found to help anyone looking for technical help producing a podcast.

It is something you can do yourself with some technical expertise and a basic smartphone camera microphone set up. Although some apps are simpler than others to use and get to grips with, Detail was the simplest podcasting app I found, apps like GarageBand for podcasting sit in the middle of difficulty and learning curve with professional broadcasting apps like adobe Audition needing a good deal of time, dedication and budget to master.

If you have a small budget to produce your podcast and are based in Leicester you may want to consider speaking to Chase at Leicester Podcast studio on Charles Street who was highly recommended by a good friend I trust or also on my door step there is a friendly local business Paragon Creative Studios who I have spoken to a couple of times on the phone and have also listened to a few of the podcasts they have produced, on Spotify one of which a sales training expert Rob Spence The Sales Circle which is extremely well produced. The difficulty when recording a podcast your self is getting clear quality audio, no feedback and the sound on this podcast produced by Paragon Creative Studios is 1st class.

I have not booked there studio yet in Countesthorpe, if you want to film as well, you may want to use different furniture (especially for a creative person like me selling interiors) as their set up looks a little bit dated and very basic. The staging options at Leicester Podcast studio are much nicer and more sophisticated.

You can book the studio and equipment you need for £40 per hour, a couple of hundred for the day during the week. As I understand it they will deliver an edited finished product to you. Will upload it to your hosting platform of choice Buzzsprout we’ve looked into and they get it onto Spotify, Apple and all the other sites delivering Podcasts. There are quite a few but it seems relatively straightforward once you have your RSS feed ready to share.

Paragon Creative Studios do also offer social media promotion services for additional fees if you need them. This is probably something most people could tackle best themselves.

Not sure yet what the total investment would be for a finished podcast series. I have estimated to go down the produced studio route for a six 20 minute podcast series it would cost around £500 - £600 with two studio days included.

I am probably going to have a go myself, rope my husband in as chief grip initially for free first, and practise working on my format and presenting my content without too many ums and ahs before investing. And see how the audio sounds. I’ve been told this is the big sticker doing it yourself, you’ll get better recording quality using microphones and working in a room with soft furnishings and carpets (something I have in abundance at home) as bare rooms create a lot of bounce and reverberation. I think it’s good to be prepared and have a practise before making a large investment as the key to any great podcast is the presenting talent and the content at the end of the day.

However It’s great to know there’s a couple of friendly small businesses with the expertise on the doorstep should I decide to invest and use a studio and experienced producer for my podcast.