WOUB Public Media at Ohio University, Athens, produces a series entitled “Our Town,” an educational documentary film about the history and heritage, events and personalities that comprise communities within our broadcast coverage area. The hour-long program features interviews with local historians, community leaders and authors who help tell the story of the town from its beginning to present day. The station hosts a free premiere screening open to the entire community before it airs on WOUB-TV.
Common Ground is our local production that highlights people, places and activities unique to our area and celebrates all that makes northern Minnesota such a wonderful place to call home.
North Country at Work (NC@W) has been collecting photographs and audio content that tell historic and contemporary stories of people at work, town by town, across the vast rural geography of New York State served by North Country Public Radio. NC@W is now returning to the featured towns, setting up photo exhibits, and hosting work-related story slams, which are recorded and added to the NC@W permanent archive.
A collaborative project between WPT and WPR, Food Traditions explores expressions of identity through food. From the Mississippi River to lake Michigan, the Apostle Islands to Beloit, we learn about ingredients Wisconsinites choose to grow, collect, use and leave out, how they prepare a dish, whom they share it with and how these traditions construct their sense of identity. This project explores underrepresented identities, touching on topics like family tradition, food sovereignty, assimilation, integration, community building, health, immigration and sustainability. With popular shows like Wisconsin Foodie and Around the Farm Table and with the recent success of the Great Wisconsin Baking Challenge, food has become part of the WPT brand. This project is leveraging our digital community and asking them to engage with us around food in a more comprehensive way.
IowaWatch.org sought out military veterans in August through November 2017 with two simple questions: What should Iowans know about being a veteran, and what could Iowans do to show their support other than simply saying they do it? We answered these questions by 1) going to veterans at places where their service is noted publicly, 2) producing two separate radio reports distributed statewide on a network of 19 stations, 3) producing written stories distributed statewide to Iowa newspapers for republication, 4) hosting a live storytelling event where five selected veterans told about something significant in their lives and 5) recruiting partners to help spread these stories.
To Foster Change is PBS SoCal’s initiative to raise awareness around the systemic and personal challenges Los Angeles foster youth face and overcome every day, while providing opportunities for youth to take control of their own stories. The station partners with over 30 social service organizations to support and encourage caregivers, share positive stories, create a space to brainstorm new approaches to supporting youth, and train young adults in media arts.
WPLN News’ Versify bridges the many communities of Middle Tennessee. The podcast team works hand-in-hand with the community to enable personal narrative storytelling and the documentation of local histories through poetry.
When our long-time classical music retired, we rearranged our schedule and created In the Moment, a daily news and culture magazine program….”[with] a rooted sense of place, and that place is South Dakota. In the Moment features authentic conversations with news makers, scholars, artists, and everyday South Dakotans. We bring you world-class radio storytelling featuring the highest journalistic integrity.”
New England Public Radio and Amherst College’s Copeland Colloquium have collected the personal stories of nearly 30 people from around the world who have made their new home in western New England. Traversing continents and cultures, the project illuminates the many pathways leading to our small corner of the globe, and explores the shared experience among those seeking a new life in a foreign land.
Unheard L.A. is a three-part, live event series where storytellers share tales about life in Southern CA. To gather stories, we used the Public Insight Network, texting through Groundsource, postcards at 70 public libraries, multiple social media platforms, eventually collecting 250 submissions. We placed 25 storytellers in 3 live events, which L.A. Weekly made its ‘pick of the week.’ An attendee called it “The best reflection of L.A. that I have ever seen on stage.” Facebook event posts reached nearly 38,000 people.
Over the past two years KSJD has worked to develop and produce three story-telling initiatives that showcase the importance of first-person story – The Raven Narratives (themed live events with story-tellers from the Four Corners region); Dragon Tales (live events with at-risk youth telling their stories), and Mesa Verde Voices (a podcast series with the voices of archaeologists who study the prehistory of the Southwest and the voices of modern Pueblo peoples who descended from the prehistoric peoples that lived there.)
North Country at Work is a multiplatform project exploring the “history of work” through photographs stored in libraries, historical associations, museums and residents’ homes. We go community by community, to scan photographs and record stories about work. We are building a software platform for archival materials that will be searchable and interactive, encouraging exploration and discovery. We will share the software platform with other stations to use for their own multimedia projects.
Radio Milwaukee believes music is a powerful force to bring people together – a belief that drives their mission to utilize music to connect diverse audiences. In 2016, they launched Band Together to act on that belief, creating a unique evening of music and food, with diverse, live music – featuring four local bands from four genres – and a variety of ethnic appetizers from local restaurants. Between bands, the station puts on storytelling performances about race and people coming together.
Ode is a bimonthly live storytelling event from KWIT-KOJI Siouxland Public Media, of which Stories Without Borders was one installment. For this particular evening, the station teamed up with two other nonprofit organizations: the Mary Treglia Community House, whose mission is to help immigrants living in the community, and the Sioux City Art Center. Six storytellers stood before a live audience to tell their stories of leaving one home for another.
