In the new episode of Ossos do Ofício, Miguel Barbot talks to Hugo Branco, musician and producer, artistic director of VIC // Aveiro Arts House.

We talked about how you take on a family house that had been closed for twelve years and was at risk of being sold, and turn it into a creative ecosystem spread across five floors. Who pays the bills at the start, how long it takes before there is any room to do anything else, and how you sustain a cultural project without continuous funding.

The conversation covers the guest house that finances everything else, the relationship with Aveiro's cultural fabric, because a project like this does not survive in isolation, and the question that never gets settled in these structures: whether to grow or not, and with what team.

At the end of the episode, Hugo talks about VIC NIC, the house's record label, about the work of conserving the legacy of his grandfather, Vasco Branco, and of the rest of the family, including his mother, the poet Rosa Alice Branco. And about his own musical projects, such as Piurso.

In this episode, Miguel Barbot talks to Joana Correia, a type designer with fifteen years' experience and the founder of Nova Type Foundry.

We talked about her career, from her early work with Google Fonts to her collaboration with The Type Founders in the United States, and above all about what is rarely discussed: how much it actually costs to design a typeface, how long it takes before it starts to pay off, and how you build a sustainable business in a market that is global but niche (and dominated by large platforms). The conversation covers sales and licensing channels, the industry's shift towards subscription models, and what all of this means for independent foundries, many of them micro-businesses. At the end of the episode, Joana explains how Ligado Studio came about, founded with Paley Dreier to support type designers and foundries in developing their businesses.

Earlier this year, Alice and Miguel had the pleasure of being at the Fundação GDA podcast "Isto não é mais um podcast" to talk about our experience of EU funding for art, culture and creativity. 

In this episode, they explain how we use EU funding to combine the production and publishing of technical content that is commercially viable but is of significant importance to our audience and to society with the research of innovative learning methodologies.

After difficult times during the pandemic, Bombarda, Porto's Art District community, came together again to favour different projects, fostering innovation and networking in a frankly and continually creative territory.
BOMBARDA is a podcast dedicated to everyday topics in the Miguel Bombarda neighbourhood in Porto. Made by and for residents of this territory - whether residents or entrepreneurs - this space exists to record and amplify reflections and discussions around the local development of the well-known "Art District" in Porto, whether these are cultural issues, social, environmental, urbanistic or economic.

It was late September when I visited CRU Creative Hub's brand-new audio studio. I was very excited about spending that morning with our dear friends and clients (we still owe you a post about our extensive work there). We recorded the first episode of their new Indiworkers podcast, and I had the honour of being the first to be interviewed.

For the first episode of a series full of illustrious connoisseurs, the crazy people deciding this podcast decided it was a good idea to invite me. Maybe I'm illustrious, one never knows, but I'm certainly not a connoisseur.