Current (https://current.org/project-status/semi-finalist/page/7/)
Grace Weber, a Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter hosts a monthly session – Grace Weber’s Music Lab — where she invites local high school musicians to perform in an “open-mic” setting. In addition, a professional musician or entertainment industry guest shares professional advice and critiques the students’ performances. Each session includes an educational module, guest interview, and student performances.
In a year-long initiative, WTTW/Chicago PBS explored the intricacies, challenges, and voices of the local Pilsen community. It aired as a 60-min. documentary, followed by a live town hall, produced in collaboration with Univision Chicago. After the premiere, WTTW hosted a series of events across Chicago and partnered with the Chicago Public Schools to host a video production workshop for high school students to produce short documentaries about their neighborhood experiences. The project will culminate in a youth film festival.
After the 2016 election, we focused on KC exurbs, looking for issues that don’t surface in KC. Led by our community engagement team we went to Atchison, Kansas, to develop an hour-long show. That content also became two local Morning Edition stories, several digital stories and a shorter podcast for KCUR’s series Midwesternish. This content approached the town from a hard news perspective as well as character-driven stories that appealed to both listeners in Atchison and the Kansas City metro.
School of Jazz has existed for 12 years. Each year we select a dozen middle/high school jazz bands. We pair each band with a local music professional. We host a live studio recording session with a videographer, photographer, and post taping production. The video is posted on our YouTube Channel. Some student become guest DJ’s. We include SOJ stories in our news programs. This year we followed three students as they performed at the Essentially Ellington Competition in New York.
In front of a live audience in our studio we conduct an interview with three creative, influential Nashvillians from different fields using a common theme. For example, in a theme about investigators, we included an investigative reporter, a private eye, and a disease detective. Following the taping, we serve refreshments and provide an opportunity to meet our guests. We edit each interview session into a 25-minute podcast and a few short radio pieces, garnering as many as 80,000 downloads.
“i go home” is a one-hour 2016 TV documentary produced by WITF chronicling the journey from institution to inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities in the 1960’s. This title honors a man with intellectual disability who was institutionalized at Pennhurst State School and Hospital in eastern Pennsylvania during childhood and could only say those three words. The goal of the film was to increase society’s awareness of the journey of Pennsylvanians with intellectual disability and their contribution to American life.
In 2010 one of our WGUC announcers asked his musician friends to record an acoustic adaptation of a Christmas classic. The collection was compiled into a CD called the RING CD and Cincinnati Public Radio offered it as a gift during the fall fund drive. It became one of our most popular gifts; musicians loved being a part of the project; it is a strong LOCALLY produced CD. Results to date: 3,774 CD requests and $377,400+ raised from CD sales.
There was an enormous need in South Florida for preschool teacher training. So, we created an online professional development service for preschool teachers featuring virtual field trips, lesson plans, student assessments, take home pages, and vocabulary words. The program is free, except for those needing in-service hours or CEUs. We change $40.00 per Teacher Association Membership/school year. Members can earn 8 CEUs or 80 In-service hours. We have 67,311 free member registered users; 11,540 paying members.
Unprisoned is a series showing how mass incarceration in New Orleans and Louisiana – the world’s “incarceration capital” – affects families, communities and notions of justice. The first season looked at the effects on citizenry outside prison walls telling stories of people caught in the criminal legal system, of family members of incarcerated persons, and of residents reentering society after serving time. These stories were broadcast on air, produced as a podcast, streamed, and shared at live events.
Made Here is an initiative designed to bring local Vermont (and other regional) filmmakers work to Vermont PBS viewers, on air and online. The station hired a Local Content Manager, Eric Ford, and tasked him to find and acquire Vermonter-produced content. With Ford’s guidance and focus, the station was able to significantly increase the amount of local content they procured enabling the station to dedicate 12-14 hours per week to local programming in addition to new show premieres every month.
This was a user generated contest for ideas for our local TV history series to raise brand awareness for “Colorado Experience,” to increase digital engagement and acquire new audience members. Uses Woobox, an application that integrates with social media to solicit ideas from the public, then host a vote to select the winning episode idea. We produce half-hour episodes on that topic and host a screening of the episode in the hometown of the individual who submitted the winning idea.
90.5 WUOL, a member station of Louisville Public Media, provides access to classical music to more citizens of the region than all other arts organizations combined. The station has made a concerted effort to embrace its role as a leader in education, young artist development, and community service, through the creation of outreach programs that encourage children, families, and schools to engage with classical music and public radio stories.
Radio Milwaukee has the mission to foster community engagement through music and stories. A pillar of this mission is to provide a platform for local musicians to share their work with an engaged and supportive listener base. Key pieces: 414 Music Live a weekly live performance by local artists in front of a live audience, that is broadcast and streamed live; the annual Radio Milwaukee Music Awards; and 414music.fm, an HD channel and digital stream broadcasting only Milwaukee music.
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.
For over 20 years, WPSU’s Our Town video series has captured the spirit of local communities from the perspective of the residents by providing an opportunity for the community to share the unique features of their town. Approximately 25 community volunteers collect video and photos and then are on camera telling stories in the final program in each community. WPSU currently produces four “Our Towns” a year with the stories airing during a special heavily promoted evening slot.
KVIE has been doing a live televised art auction (245 plus pieces over 3 days) for over 30 years. To support all the artists who donate work for the auction, we decided to open an art gallery in our station. We remodeled unused lobby space. Artists now show and sell work through 6 exhibitions each year. The gallery, open Mon- Fri, requires no additional staffing.
The WEDU Be More Awards started 12 years ago as a seasonal initiative to honor nonprofits and volunteers in West Central Florida and was well received, being dubbed the “Academy Awards for Nonprofits” by the Tampa Bay Times. About 5 years ago, WEDU turned the project into an annual initiative that has since grown dramatically — from approximately 40 participating nonprofit organizations to more than 140. This showing has enabled WEDU to become the media branch of the local nonprofit community.
It’s a struggle to find afford living in New York City, and the cost keeps rising. WNYC is looking at what it takes to continue making this place home, one neighborhood at a time. We have published more than two dozen stories focused issues of Affordability. We led conversations on gentrification conference in the South Bronx. Our reporters taught journalism undergraduate and graduate students how to cover the topic of affordability.