The CLES Podcast

Rethinking how local economies work takes more than policy papers. Partnering with CLES, Cue Productions handled post-production for The CLES Podcast, creating a structured audio series that explores how public spending and community ownership can transform UK places.

The Brief

As the UK's leading national organisation for local economies, CLES works with councils, anchor institutions, and policymakers to create fairer economic systems. From the famous Preston Model of community wealth building to green transition planning, CLES needed a dedicated audio channel to share real-world case studies with a wider public audience.

The podcast required a clear structure to make dense economic strategy, local governance, and procurement policy accessible to community organisers, council officers, and regional leaders. Cue was brought in to manage technical production, ensuring remote conversations across the UK sounded crisp and well-paced.

How We Made It Work: Translating Policy into Practical Stories

To create a show that offered genuine value to public sector leaders and economic activists, Cue provided an end-to-end post-production workflow focused on narrative clarity.

We focused on:

• Remote Recording Optimisation: Featuring council leaders, academic researchers, and policy experts joining from different regional offices, raw audio tracks varied in quality. We applied post-production cleanup to balance vocal levels, remove room echo, and eliminate background noise.
• Structuring Complex Discussions: Local economic concepts can easily become bogged down in jargon. We helped edit each episode to keep the focus on practical outcomes, moving smoothly from big policy ideas to ground-level community impacts.
• Warm and Approachable Sonic Branding: We created a subtle, clean audio package with welcoming music transitions that reflected the public service ethos of CLES while maintaining a modern, professional tone.
• Turnkey Production Workflow: From raw track ingestion and dialogue editing to mastering and metadata setup, Cue managed the technical execution so the CLES team could focus on research, policy advocacy, and guest curation.

The Results

The CLES Podcast established itself as an important audio resource for professionals working in local government and economic development.

• Targeted Sector Reach: Created a direct channel for CLES to share progressive economic models with local authorities and regional planners across the UK.
• Clear Educational Value: Turned intricate policy frameworks into accessible episodes that highlight how towns and cities are building local resilience.
• Consistent Broadcast Standard: Maintained high audio quality across all remote recordings, ensuring policy discussions were easy to follow.

What Listeners Love

Public sector leaders and community organisers appreciate the grounded, real-world examples. Rather than abstract theory, each episode highlights practical steps local communities have taken to keep money circulating in their regional economies.

Communicating Economic Reform

Translating economic research into accessible audio helps good ideas spread faster. Managing post-production for CLES allowed their team to focus on sharing proven models for local economic change.

— Niall Killeney-Taylor, Head of Production

🎧 Listen to The CLES Podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

🎤 Audio Production by Cue Productions for CLES