Couverture de Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda

Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda

De : Rigour & Flow with Aiwan and Tamanda
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The show where business meets love, and culture meets critique. We’re Aiwan and Tamanda, two Black women with 20 years each in entertainment, research, and social justice. We’re also a married couple figuring out what it means to build a life and two businesses together.


We'll talk about the realities of running a business, making creative work that matters, and navigating research with integrity.


What You’ll Find:

  • Honest conversations on entrepreneurship, research, and creativity.
  • Unpacking the intersections of business, leadership, relationships, and identity.
  • Hot takes on media, culture, and social change.
  • Guest insights from entrepreneurs, researchers, and artists.

If you’re navigating business, love, and the messiness of life while trying to do meaningful work, you’re in the right place.

Episodes drop every Tuesday!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AiAi Studios Direction Economie Management et direction Relations Sciences sociales
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    Épisodes
    • Black Kids, White Classrooms: Black History Erasure, Colonial Control & Britain’s Education System

      Black Kids, White Classrooms: Black History Erasure, Colonial Control & Britain’s Education System
      Jan 27 2026
      Education is not neutral. And for Black children, it is rarely complete. School is often the first place where erasure is formalised, belonging becomes conditional, and history is taught as if our people were a footnote rather than the foundation.In this episode, we turn our attention to education - not as a neutral site of learning, but as a powerful system of selection, silence, and control. Drawing on our own schooling across Botswana, Northern Ireland, London, Leeds, and the Midlands, we reflect on what we were taught, what we internalised, and what we later had to unlearn. Aiwan reflects on moving from a Black-majority school in South-East London to predominantly white classrooms in Leeds, navigating the silence around race while carrying the weight of being “the only one.” She speaks about the hidden curriculum - how schools quietly teach you who is centred, who is valued, and who is merely tolerated - and why supplementing formal education at home became essential to developing a fuller sense of self. Tamanda draws on her education in Botswana, Northern Ireland, and England, as well as her later academic experience, to examine how education systems claim neutrality while carefully avoiding power. She reflects on moments where critical thinking was praised in theory, yet penalised in practice - revealing the tight boundaries around what could be questioned, named, or challenged. Together, we explore how Black history is routinely framed as optional or supplementary in UK schooling, rather than foundational to understanding Britain itself. We examine the expectation that Black families must fill the gaps - through Saturday schools, community learning, books, travel, and cultural memory - simply to counter what is missing, sanitised, or distorted in statutory education. We then consider what Aiwan learned over ten years educating young minds as a teacher herself. This is a conversation about power, not pedagogy alone. About what knowledge is protected, what knowledge is deferred, and why calls for “balance” or “neutrality” so often function to preserve the status quo. And about the long-term emotional and intellectual cost of learning in systems that demand assimilation while withholding recognition. 🎙️ In this episode:Encounters with erasure: Growing up Black in White education systems, beginning with the deafening silence around Black historyThe curated curriculum: How schooling disciplines curiosity, avoids power, and prioritises order over understandingSupplementing the system: Learning Black history beyond the classroom through Saturday schools, newspapers and self-directed studyWhen curiosity is punished: A defining moment where questioning the curriculum was met with anger, revealing what was “off limits”Entering teacher training: Confronting Eurocentric ideas of intelligence, culture and legitimacy as a Black womanTeaching from lived culture: What happened when music education met connective language, rhythm and real-world experienceBeyond Black History Month: Tokenism, cherry-picked heroes and how Black history must be continuous and connected to the nowChanging the status quo: What it means to teach with care, responsibility and cultural fluency for the next generation 🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qQ6-XNwHaeY🔁 Share with someone thinking about education, history, or curriculum reform☕ Want to support the show? Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflowPlease rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes.Connect with us on:TikTokInstagramLinkedInAiAi StudiosRoots & RigourThis is an AiAi Studios Production©AiAi Studios 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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      1 h et 32 min
    • “I’m Done Performing Productivity!” | Burnout, Worth & Walking Away

      “I’m Done Performing Productivity!” | Burnout, Worth & Walking Away
      Jan 20 2026
      New year energy is usually about what we are chasing next. In this episode of Rigour & Flow, we slow that impulse down and start 2026 by asking, “What are we leaving behind in 2025?” After an intense year of work, production, learning curves and hard lessons, we wanted something lighter for this conversation. The result is a mix of reflection and a lot of laughter, alongside some seriously important focus points as we step into the year ahead for Rigour & Flow, AiAi Studios, as well as Roots & Rigour. We launched into our on-mic reflections without comparing notes at all for this one - each of us sharing five things we are consciously putting down as we enter into a year we both want to feel totally different from that last! Aiwan reflects on leaving behind the misused word “talent” in the creative industries, exploring how it enables poor behaviour, while erasing the intense work of entire teams. She speaks about productivity systems that promised balance, but only delivered pressure, pain and anxiety. And finally, the cost of allowing other people’s visions to dominate her time, energy and creative life. Tamanda reflects on entering public-facing work after years in academia and the shock of navigating online hostility and automated culture war commentary. She talks about funding applications, funding rejections, the need to centre realism, and the difference between backing yourself and building expectations on timelines you do not control. Together, we unpack over-functioning, the consequences of straying out of our lanes, underestimating the labour behind the scenes in creative work, and the subtle ways self-abandonment often masquerades as dedication. We close with reflections on choosing to trust our experience and instinct more this year, planning for guilt-free rest, living truthfully and outline some simple decisions we have made to build a work and life balance that can be sustained. 🎧 In this episode:The misuse of “talent”: How creative industries blur the lines of contributions, empower poor behaviour, and overlook collective effortProductivity promises and personal cost: Systems that claimed balance but delivered anxiety, rigidity and rebellionWasted social media arguments: Navigating public commentary spaces, automated hostility, and why not every comment deserves a responseOptimism and timelines: Funding hopes, rejection, and learning the difference between backing yourself and just getting your hopes up too earlyOver-functioning and reciprocity: The hidden costs of filling the gaps others leave behind because you are a high performerStaying in your lane: Underestimating creative processes, straying into everything, and learning to respect and trust others’ expertiseSelf-care as infrastructure: The importance of planning rest, nourishment and recovery before crisis hits 🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xuvHT96FGeY🔁 Share with someone choosing differently this year☕ Want to support the show? Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow Please rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes.Connect with us on:TikTokInstagramLinkedInAiAi StudiosRoots & RigourThis is an AiAi Studios Production©AiAi Studios 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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      59 min
    • Snatched! | Behind the Scenes on RuPaul’s Drag Race Companion Podcast

      Snatched! | Behind the Scenes on RuPaul’s Drag Race Companion Podcast
      Jan 13 2026

      In this Feedwarmer episode of Rigour & Flow, we spotlight a project from Aiwan’s back catalogue that brought her an enormous amount of joy to produce: Snatched! - the companion podcast celebrating all things RuPaul’s Drag Race.


      We open with a short preamble reflecting on why Snatched! mattered to AiAi Studios as a creative project - not just because of the joy and chaos of Drag Race, but as producers who care deeply about sound, pacing, playfulness, and permission to lean fully into camp, queer chaos. From there, we introduce Snatched! and share clips and reflections on how the show came together, why it worked, and what made it such a pleasure to produce.


      Hosted by Sam Damshenas and Umar Sarwar, Snatched! is smart, funny, irreverent, and unapologetically joyful - a podcast that treats fan culture as something thoughtful, creative, and worth taking seriously. We sit with the craft behind that joy: the sound design choices, the creative freedom, and the rare delight of making something that doesn’t need to justify itself beyond being fun.


      We talk about why Drag Race lends itself so well to podcasting, what it means to make a companion show that serves both superfans and casual listeners, and why projects like this remind us that pleasure, camp, and creativity are not distractions from “serious” work -they are part of it.


      🎧 In this episode:

      • Reflections on joy, camp-queer chaos, and creative freedom
      • Spotlighting Snatched! as a Drag Race companion podcast
      • Why RuPaul’s Drag Race makes perfec the opportunity to build new sonic landscapes
      • Fan culture as thoughtful, playful, and meaningful
      • Why making something fun can still be rigorous and technical work


      🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts

      🎥 Watch the full episode on YouTube

      🔁 Share with someone who loves Drag Race, podcast craft, or joyful sound design

      ☕ Want to support Rigour & Flow? Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/rigourandflow


      Please rate, review and subscribe for weekly episodes.

      Connect with us on:

      • TikTok
      • Instagram
      • LinkedIn
      • AiAi Studios
      • Roots & Rigour


      This is an AiAi Studios Production

      ©AiAi Studios 2025

      Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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      47 min
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