By Priyanshi Katare
‘Anywhere Is Home’ is a podcast run by student Julia Relova that explores the concept of ‘home.’ Through her work, she is providing a creative space for people to discuss and challenge the linearity attached to the idea of personal and homely spaces. “I’m trying to go beyond just understanding ‘where’ home is,” she explains, “but also what and who makes it home and when it becomes home.” According to Relova, the concept of home is universal and there is a common thread that connects all of us. This forms the basic premise of her work.
Relova chose podcasting as her medium because she loves talking to people and knew that she could utilize that to her advantage. “A lot of the time on the podcast I let the person talk as much as they would like before I interrupt,” she explains, “I think that’s really powerful in terms of storytelling because not many people get to tell stories the way they would want.” Her interview process is focused on furthering such stories. “When it comes to storytelling in a non-script form, there is a lot of opportunity for me to dig deeper and get more context,” she elaborates.
Currently, she is interviewing people in her inner circles to create credibility and leverage her understanding of these people to make informed interviewing decisions. However, moving forward she wants to be able to highlight stories of people who are in different stages of their lives. She is trying to target people who are in transitional phases of their lives. “The people I want to talk to are the people who are experiencing a little change and disruption in their idea of home,” she explains. She believes that such disruption brings about new insights that are meaningful to explore. “For the person I am interviewing I’m hoping it’s bringing some new insight into who they identify as,” she elaborates, “In the context of creating a narrative such identifiers are important.”
Relova is excited to grow her platform and she has recently applied to the Propel Program at The Garage. The Propel Program is a quarter-long mentorship opportunity geared towards providing women entrepreneurs with funding and business acumen. “Sometimes it’s easy to forget that having a podcast is an entrepreneurial endeavor,” she elaborates. “What I appreciated about the Propel Program was that it recognizes creative endeavors look different than a lot of other businesses but are still undoubtedly entrepreneurial.”
She got accepted into the spring cohort and she aims to expand her audience through this program. “The ultimate goal is to make this podcast a space where people can talk about community and community building,” she explains. Relova eventually wants to create an app or a website for people who are trying to build their communities and provide them a medium to do so.