The ITCILO Media Lab: A New Stage for Global Conversations
The ITCILO Media Lab: A New Stage for Global Conversations
How the ITCILO is experimenting with innovative formats to rethink online engagement
Michael Aboya
The post-it on the door reads “recording in progress.” Inside, two chairs face each other across a low table, a pair of microphones angled between them like reading lamps. The guest smooths a page of notes she will barely glance at. On the other side of the glass, a producer raises three fingers, then two, then one, and points.
"Welcome back. Today we're talking about what really happens at the negotiating table."
A few meters away, a facilitator steps onto her mark in front of a green screen. On the monitor beside the camera, a speaker joining from another continent adjusts his headset and gives a thumbs-up. Somebody tests a poll question. Somebody else straightens a plant on the desk. Behind all of it, the murals on the walls splash colour across every frame.
This is an ordinary morning in the ITCILO Media Lab, where expertise on the world of work finds a microphone, a camera and an audience.
Michael Aboya
What is the ITCILO Media Lab?
Tucked next to the ITCILO Innovation Lab on the Turin campus, the Media Lab is a creative production space built for one purpose: helping experts turn what they know into multimedia content people will actually watch and listen to.
The studio is fitted with professional microphones, cameras, and green screens for recording and live streaming. More importantly, it comes with people. An expert support team stays with each project from the first idea to the final cut, writing scripts, building sets and shooting productions so that subject-matter experts can concentrate on what they do best: sharing their expertise.
The Lab draws on the Centre's long commitment to high-quality learning and communication. It blends storytelling, music and video to give ideas a stage. A podcast heard on a morning commute, a webinar that holds a global audience for a full hour, a radio broadcast that reaches listeners on a weak connection; each carrying knowledge further than any classroom wall allows.
Michael Aboya
Introduction to the 3 production formats
The Media Lab works in three ways. It helps you amplify ideas, connect audiences, and broadcast live. Each format starts from the same question: who needs to hear this, and where will they be when they do? Whichever path you choose, the Media Lab team helps you pick the format that fits your audience, shape the story around it, and take care of the production from start to finish.
3 production formats
Amplify
Podcast episodes
Connect
Hybrid webinars
Broadcast
Radio shows
A subject-matter expert, a project team, or a partner organization sits down with the Media Lab team with an idea. Sometimes that idea is a single conversation. Sometimes it is a full series. Together they shape the concept, write the script, record in the studio, and finish the episodes in post-production, ready to publish across ITCILO's channels and beyond.
When should you choose this?
- Expert interview series
- Mobile learning journeys
- Advocacy and campaign storytelling
See it in action
Picture a union representative and an employers' negotiator, each with a phone in hand, listening to the same tense scene play out between two characters at a bargaining table. That is the experience behind Bargaining Voices, a mobile-first learning journey on negotiating collective agreements developed jointly by ITCILO's Workers' Activities Programme (ACTRAV) and Employers' Activities Programme (ACTEMP).
An organizing team is planning a conference, a panel discussion, or a global institutional event that needs to work in the room and online at the same time. The Media Lab turns it into a broadcast-style production: several cameras, live direction from the studio, remote speakers woven seamlessly into the programme, and on-screen polls and Q&As that invite everyone to take part.
When should you choose this?
- Flagship conferences and launches
- Panel discussions with remote speakers
- Global institutional events
See it in action
As part of the UN General Assembly 2026, the ITCILO Learning Innovation team went live with Into the Future: Technology, Learning, and New Possible Worlds. The hour moved between two studios, cutting to the Innovation Lab for a mini documentary on emerging technologies for social justice, then back to the Media Lab, where an AI avatar glowing inside a holographic box answered audience questions live.
A project team wants to reach people live, on air. It might be a recurring show, a live report from an event, or a special broadcast tied to a campaign. The Media Lab supports the whole radio production process, from editorial planning and scripting to sound design and live or recorded broadcasting.
When should you choose this?
- Live coverage of campus events
- Recurring community shows
- Campaign and awareness specials
See it in action
The Centre's love of radio has deep roots on campus. The ITCILO Innovation Day 2021 went live on air, interviewing colleagues and friends in a nod to community radio. The conversations wandered through creativity, human connection and sustainability, and made a quiet but convincing case: radio and podcasts are low-budget formats with serious storytelling power.
Michael Aboya
Ready when you are
The ITCILO Media Lab gives knowledge on the world of work somewhere to go. Whether your idea wants to be heard on a commute, watched live by audiences across continents, or broadcast on air, the studio, the equipment, and the people are ready to help it travel.
