Rigour & Flow Podcast

Rigour & Flow is a new podcast that began in early April from Dr. Tamanda Walker and Aiwan Obinyan. A married couple, they are part of a dream team of creative invention that runs AiAi Studios, a storytelling and production studio based in Leeds, UK, but working for clients globally such as Nike, GAY TIMES, gal-dem, Amazon, Channel 4, and Audible. The studio started 12 years ago and has been incorporated for the last four years, signaling that they plan to be around for a long time.

Why did they start this podcast? That question is best answered by Aiwan and Tamanda. “For the entirety of our relationship, we’ve kept a private video diary — one of the hazards (and blessings) of being married to a documentarian. It was our way of checking in: with ourselves, each other, and the shape our lives were taking. Rigour & Flow is, in many ways, an extension of that archive — except this time, we’ve gone public.”

Tamanda and Aiwan add: “A brilliant consultant, Al Kennedy, challenged us to work out in the open more, build community, and let your clients and peers see more of who you are. That pushed us to stop hiding behind polished decks, neat bios, and cryptic LinkedIn posts — and start sharing the real, raw, messy parts of how we think, work, and live.”

What does the podcast cover? What do Aiwan and Tamanda talk about? This is the show where business meets love, and culture meets critique. Where Aiwan and Tamanda explore work, identity, queerness, and creativity, with rigour and with flow.

Aiwan and Tamanda declare: “We’re two Black queer women who’ve spent decades working across media, entertainment, research, and social justice — and we’re using this space to speak our truths, ask better questions, and have the conversations we don’t hear enough of.”

“If you’re into research that resists, audio that flows, and truth that hits — this is for you,” they add.

And here’s what you can expect from their first twelve episodes:

🔸 Honest, free-flowing convos about work, love, identity & culture

🔸 Topics like: the policing of Black thought in white spaces, the Black queer baby tax, the politics of time, reality TV, and research as resistance

🔸 A few wild hypotheticals — like whether we’d ever make a documentary with or about Tommy Robinson

🔸 A mix of deep analysis, raw storytelling, and occasional rants

🔸 A live online episode on Tuesday, 27th May — please save the date!

🔸 And a community Q&A to close out the season.

Again, we hear the answer from them. “We talk about big things - race, gender, class, power — but we try to do it with humor, honesty, heart, and humility. And also as authentically as possible.

We’re trying to model what it looks like to think in public, to (un)learn out loud, and to stay rooted in community while doing ambitious and bold work. Because so often, especially as people, we’re expected to pick a lane: be the expert or the creative, the thinker or the feeler, the serious voice or the comic relief. This podcast refuses that binary.”

The company they started, AiAiStudios has an impressive record of accomplishment. The company produces documentary films such as Right To Move: The Unity Ball documentary series. They also developed audio design for projects such as Wax Print and the podcast Stacked. Their first in-house podcast was created in collaboration with UK Black Pride and proudly supported by GAY TIMES.

Perhaps their most high-profile project was a completed podcast project for Amazon Prime that ran in six, approximately 40-minute episodes from May to June 2021. Escape: The Underground Railroad Podcast narrates a more accurate and deeply personal tale of the Underground Railroad.

Their latest project is Hidden Histories with Nova Reid, a powerful six-part Audible Original podcast uncovering the untold stories of extraordinary Black women who shaped world history, British culture, and society. From London to Leeds to Jamaica, host Nova Reid transports listeners through time and place, where we immerse ourselves in the worlds of these extraordinary women whose stories have been buried for too long.

After they’d developed so many creative projects for clients, I asked what it was like producing the show for yourselves.

They answered: “Wild. Wonderful. A little unhinged. We’ve spent years working on other people’s change agendas. So this podcast is part of reclaiming ours. It’s a record of our conversations, but it’s also an offering to our communities, others doing this work, and anyone trying to live and work in alignment with their values.”

When asked why this project differs from the ones with the AiAi Studio team, they respond: “When we produce for clients, there’s structure, clarity, a brief, and crucially, a budget. We can bring in our team across various parts of the work: editing, marketing, design, and strategy. But because Rigour & Flow is our baby, and our personal investment, we’re doing everything ourselves, squeezing it into evenings and weekends around our client.”

Rigour & Flow has meant that Tamanda and Aiwan step into new roles. Aiwan adds: “That’s meant both of us stepping into roles we’d usually hand to specialists — and for Tamanda in particular, learning entirely new creative skills, from digital content marketing to social media strategy. It’s been a full-body stretch. It’s also required us to step out from behind the scenes. Rigour & Flow has required us to take up space — to show up fully, front and center, which has been uncomfortable at times, but also transformative. And honestly? It’s been the most liberating project we’ve done. Because it’s fully ours, we get to be slower, sillier, sharper. We’re not editing ourselves for a stakeholder. We’re editing ourselves for our own truth. And retaining much more control in the process.”

They certainly started out with an explosive episode. In their first show, Aiwan reflected on the five-year anniversary of her documentary Kenyan, Christian, Queer — a powerful film about LGBTQ+ life, faith, and resistance in Africa. She and Tamanda dove deep into the complexities of reconciling Africanness, Christianity, and queerness — both in their own lives and through the communities that shaped them.

From Black Pentecostal fire and brimstone to silent Quaker pews, from passing privilege to bisexual indecision, from heartbreak to deep affirmation — this episode is a reckoning with religion, identity, and the power of seeing all of yourself.

When we asked Aiwan and Tamanda about the essence of Rigour & Flow, they answered: “Rigour & Flow is about embracing the fullness of who we are — and holding onto our humanity in a world that so often tries to flatten it. It’s about making space for ourselves, and others, to be complex, contradictory, brilliant, messy, and whole. And to do so without needing to present ourselves as experts, thought leaders, or people who already have it all figured out.”

Check out Rigour & Flow. It’s bold, a bit brash, and absolutely brilliant.