Current (https://current.org/project-category/arts-culture/page/4/)
WLRH promotes our community’s local musicians and vibrant performing arts scene through two parallel efforts. Local Aliens is a long running compilation CD series of all-local musicians produced by WLRH and given away to the community for free; while Valley Sounds is an all-local weekly broadcast music show and award-winning podcast featuring original music of all genres created and performed in the Tennessee Valley.
WDET listeners read a book together and the station leads a community discussion about the challenging societal issues we all face. The selected book sets up these conversations and this year we are reading and discussing Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.
WYEP’s Reimagination project connects teen musicians with professional mentors to record and produce their own original music. Since 2013, the program has engaged with more than 220 area teen musicians, several of whom became Grammy and Emmy award winners.
In response to how the pandemic has changed our lives, WBGO created two new services, The WBGO Livestream Hub and the WBGO Education Hub, to connect our community to opportunities to experience live music safely, give local musicians a no-cost way to message out their online performances and connect area students and musicians for music education opportunities unavailable before the lockdown. We used social media and our community calendar, available to all NPR stations using Core Publisher, and other free tools to build this online resource.
KZMU’s annual live, original radio plays are a precious architectural space, constructed sonically, to be used as an imaginative stage to explore both the lore and realities of the rural, desert communities of our listeners. Using the broadcast medium, and building on the radio theater tradition that began in the 1930’s, KZMU’s performances create a platform for local directors, musicians, voice actors, foley artists, stage hands and sound and lighting technicians.
“The ARTery 25: Millennials of Color Impacting Boston Arts and Culture” is a week-long series that engaged the Boston region’s artists, arts organization and arts audiences, pairing multimedia editorial content with live programming to reach more than 400,000 people in its celebration of creative equity.
In our rural peninsula sticking out into the North Atlantic Ocean, creative activity has long played a key role – the quality of light in Cape Cod inspired visual artists, the accepting environment welcomed all and the intersection of sea and land created a haven for the creative mind. Today, this economic sector is overshadowed by tourism, real estate and a schism between seasonal wealth and year round survival. ArtsLight was created by our small community nonprofit station to “shine a light” on an under-reported area and, by shining that light, also cultivate a shared understanding of a creative economy that delivers far more than a visitor attraction.
91Classical is building a bridge between local arts organizations and the future generation of classical musicians. Through the Student Composer Fellowships & Ambassadors program, local students receive invaluable opportunities.
This unique project offered the region’s storytellers the platform needed to disseminate their films to a new audience through broadcast distribution of their finished films. The initiative served filmmakers from the Keys to the Treasure Coast with an audience reach of over 6.3 million, deepening the understanding of ourselves and our neighbors.
Coinciding with the second anniversary of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, WTJU produced a web-based audio tour of the city’s Confederate monuments and the history and meaning of those monuments today. We also aired audio pieces from that tour throughout the month of August 2019.
WUFT created a first-time event for North Florida fans of Downton Abbey. This in-person event included a costume contest, admission to a movie screening and an opportunity for the community to interact with other local PBS supporters to discuss their one of their favorite shows. Two events took place in one day, and participants were able to give back to WUFT monetarily with a donation for admission to the event.
The KPBS Summer Music Series is a multimedia series that highlights San Diego’s diverse music scene with in-depth interviews and music from local artists. This year we’ve made an effort to increase the focus on diversity both in the interviews and with the selection of artists. People need a break from the news cycle, but it’s also important to address the current climate and ongoing struggle for equal rights, and music is a good platform for those conversations.
PBS Utah’s Book Club in a Box provides book club hosts with a kit of curated material designed to facilitate in-depth conversations for their book clubs. The project builds engaged communities beginning with the individuals who participate in their book groups. The project supports exploration and critical thinking on current and topical film/literary works aimed to inspire involvement and a call to action.
St. Louis Public Radio’s livestream on Twitch has transformed the way our journalists connect with our audience and gives both the space and support to examine challenging news thoughtfully.
By building strong, consistent relationships with tribal leaders and by representing Wisconsin’s First Nations authentically and accurately by using first-voice narration, PBS Wisconsin shares consistent programming that highlights tribal history, culture, and lore.
Created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, weekly episodes of Safe & Sound follow relevant themes through music and interviews. From how musicians are continuing to create and connect while isolating to how BIPOC musicians experience racism while living and working in Vermont, the show aims to elevate our understanding of Vermont’s music and culture in a time of social distance.
“COVID Diaries: Stories of Resilience” is a 10-week multimedia visual, audio, and written word series that tell stories of resilience in the local community. It focuses on our local shared experience of the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests over the killing of George Floyd and others. WDET partnered with Documenting Detroit, a photojournalism and arts organization, to produce and tell these stories through the eyes of five local documentary photographers and one spoken word artist.
Concert halls and theatres closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and people are mostly staying at home, which has changed the way we enjoy music performances. WXXI’s HomeStage is a virtual concert experience, with local musicians of all genres performing in their homes for all to enjoy in our homes.
Making Buffalo Home is a local multi-platform project from Buffalo Toronto Public Media designed to share the stories of Buffalo’s newest neighbors from around the world and celebrate the rich immigrant history of the city through powerful storytelling. Through digital videos, television programs, radio features, social media and in-person events, viewers and listeners learned more about each other, creating a better understanding of our collective immigration story.
PBS Wisconsin shares the voices and talents of students of color involved in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s First Wave Scholarship program in the documentary “Hip-Hop U: The First Wave Scholars.” By addressing local disparities in accessibility, representation, and education, we help Wisconsin educators be better prepared to implement culturally relevant pedagogy in their classrooms.