TPT to present ‘mosaic of storytelling’ that reflects on America’s founding

Six projects in development for TPT in St. Paul, Minn., aim to bring a rich variety of Minnesota-focused stories to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Aligned with the national initiative planned by CPB and PBS and built with the intention of reflecting the state’s history and culture, the portfolio includes a series of shorts highlighting Minnesotans whose lives were significant to the state’s history, a cinéma vérité style documentary exploring what it means to be American and a set of improv comedy events aimed at fostering conversations around public policies.

“The 250th Project: Sharing Minnesota’s Stories” provided $10,000 for research and development of six projects that were proposed last year. The grants, which TPT unveiled in January, also include an examination of historic injustices to Native Americans, an exploration of the “pursuit of happiness” through a modern lens and a look at the power of music in showcasing Minnesota’s diversity.

TPT CCO Nick Kereakos described the initiative as gathering “a mosaic of storytelling” from Minnesota’s diverse communities. “This is an opportunity to explore and develop the stories that reflect the rich history of Minnesota and our evolving identity,” he said.

Each project is inspired by the Declaration of Independence — the principles and rights it laid as the foundation of American democracy and its omissions. TPT issued an intentionally open-ended call for proposals last year and received more than 30 submissions, said Erin Anzalone, senior director and head of TPT National Productions.

“We didn’t go in saying ‘We have to have this type of project,’” she said. “That was very exciting for us. We saw a lot of different ideas for ways to attack this.” Four of the projects are being developed by companies or creators outside of the station; TPT producers Abdifatah Abdi and Kate McDonald are researching separate projects that they each proposed.

TPT took cues from CPB and PBS, which announced its plans for a “PBS: America @ 250” initiative last year, but set up its project to be independently conceived, funded and managed. “It really aligns with our mission of amplifying different voices and working with the community through our content,” Anzalone said. “Our hope is that part of our work here has a national audience as well.”

With all six projects being in R&D, TPT hasn’t set strict deadlines for greenlighting production or completion, said Anzalone. The intention is to begin rolling them out later this year, prior to the big national celebration on July 4, 2026. Some projects may be released as late as 2027.

“There will be a lot of content and … events across the country and here in Minnesota related to that 250th, so we want to make sure things don’t get lost,” Anzalone said. “I look at these projects and my ultimate goal is that it provides a spark for conversation and a deeper understanding of the guiding principles.”

Bridging gaps through comedy

Danger Boat Productions, a company that stages in-person events that combine policy discussions and improvised comedy, is using its R&D funding to expand on “Sketches of Minnesota,” a project it created through a partnership with the Minnesota Humanities Center.

The concept is similar to Danger Boat’s signature event, “The Theater of Public Policy,” which sets the stage for civic dialogue with policy experts talking about a specific issue. Afterwards a cast of improvisational comedians create sketches inspired by those conversations. The Star Tribune once described the experience as C-SPAN being “suddenly swarmed by the cast of SNL.”

“Sketches of Minnesota” adapts this approach to policy debates on issues affecting local communities, according to Tane Danger, co-founder and host. 

“We’re going into communities all across Minnesota, facilitating conversations in the town about the values that the community shares, the things they see as divisions and challenges for themselves and what they imagine the future of their community to be,” Danger said. “It’s a really fun and unique way to get at that, on stage, through improv comedy theater.”

Danger has been a contributor to TPT’s public affairs programs, including its weekly series Almanac and the 2024 documentary Jesse Ventura Shocks The World, about the former professional wrestler who was elected Minnesota governor in 1998. Danger has also hosted various TPT events, including trivia competitions. “When TPT has some fun, quirky thing that they’re looking for somebody to work with on, I’ve gotten called to be part of that.”

Danger sees “Sketches of Minnesota” as replicable in cities and states all across the country. The project started last year with local events where participants were asked, “What do people not from your community get wrong about it?” he said. “Our improv class listens to all that and they bring all of that on stage.” After the tour wrapped up, the team took ten stories from the events and compiled a “scripted sketch show.” That will be the basis for live performances to be staged for TPT’s 250 initiative.

“This is like a Saturday Night Live, except every sketch is inspired by towns in Minnesota,” Danger said. “It shows the unique quirkiness of each place” along with “how there are issues and values that run the gamut all across the state.”

With the TPT grant, Danger plans to take the project to more communities. He also wants to film the performances so people who didn’t attend in-person can watch them later.

Leveraging insights through cinéma vérité

For his project, TPT’s Abdifatah Abdi aims to use cinéma vérité storytelling to explore the lives of different groups of people in Minnesota.

“I applied because I felt like … there isn’t just one perspective of being American,” he recalled. After evaluating his ideas, Abdi decided to pursue a four-episode docuseries capturing cultural moments that are part of American life.

Although the concept is in its early phases, he envisions at least one episode about a family celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Fourth of July in 2026 and another about a family of immigrants. “I want to be a fly on the wall.”

Abdi is an associate producer at TPT. His previous work includes the documentary shorts A Family Pain, Captive and Muslim Women in Tech. He also participated in Groundwork Minnesota, a program for emerging filmmakers led by Firelight Media, in 2022.

Another TPT producer working on the initiative is Kate McDonald, series producer for the weekly music series Stage. Her project will investigate the “pursuit of happiness,” one of the unalienable rights defined in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. 

Digging into the archives

Producers working outside TPT include independent filmmaker Cynthia Newport, who is developing a TPT 250 project on Native Americans and Minnesota’s Tribal Nations. Her previous public TV productions include Summer Sun Winter Moon, a 2009 co-production with the Independent Television Service. The Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization VocalEssence, which has produced choral music specials for TPT, will examine the power of music in its project.

Karen Sieber, a public historian, self-described “activist archivist” and adjunct professor at Southern New Hampshire University, is devising a series of short films on the contributions of Minnesotans whose roles in history aren’t widely recognized.

Sieber is the creator of Visualizing the Red Summer, a data map, archive and teaching resource about the Red Summer of 1919, when white supremacists led riots in cities all over the country. Her work has been included in the Advanced Placement African American Studies curriculum. She also appeared on the CBS News special “Tulsa 1921: An American Tragedy,” hosted by Gayle King.

Sieber is familiar with public media. She worked as a consultant for the PBS documentary series 10 That Changed America, produced by WTTW in Chicago, which ran from 2013–2018.

Her idea for TPT’s 250th initiative was partly inspired by her conversations with other public historians over the past year, she said. Those discussions have focused on how to use commemoration of the 250th anniversary “as a moment to think about where we’ve been as a nation, where we are going, where are things headed as a society?” Sieber said. “I’m curious about who has been and remains to be excluded from full participation and full representation, both nationwide and in Minnesota.”

As Sieber thought about these questions, she focused on how most of the constitutional amendments and significant court cases that expanded civil rights law were achieved because of “everyday citizens calling for those changes to be made,” she said. “The government didn’t make those changes on their own.”

Since Minnesota didn’t achieve statehood until 1858, she’s looking for stories that show how the ideals listed in the Declaration of Independence carry through to people who have impacted civic life in Minnesota.

Sieber’s other projects explore similar themes. For example, she leads the Finding Moses Initiative, a coalition of scholars working to uncover additional Underground Railroad sites and stories involving the upper Midwest. Moses Dickson, the inspiration for the project, may be a subject of her TPT 250 shorts.

She wants to share the stories of Lydia B. Angier, a woman who was committed to a sanatorium against her will in 1896 but fought for her release, and William Little Wolf, who ran away from a boarding school for Native Americans and joined the U.S. Navy to fight in World War I.

Sieber is also considering a short about the history of political protests in Minnesota that will go all the way up to demonstrations surrounding the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Another historic civil rights event in Minnesota is the 1971 wedding of Jack Baker and Michael McConnell, the first same-sex couple to have been married legally.

She envisions the shorts being used in classroom settings or combined into one longer documentary film. American Masters took a similar approach with Unladylike 2020, a multimedia project that marked the centennial of ratification of the 19th Amendment.

“In my mind, there will be a companion website with an interactive map so you can see where and when these stories are happening in relation to one another,” she said. The site can also provide additional teaching resources like transcripts of speeches, treatises, letters to the editor and film footage.

“Part of the value of this potential series is drawing those connections across time but into the present,” she said. “If we’re talking about voting rights of women, African Americans or Native Americans in Minnesota in the past, we could use that to draw connections to people working today on voting advocacy for immigrants or convicted individuals. It’s about finding those ways to draw those ideas across cultural groups.”