you never know

Radio Diaries
Produced by Joe Richman
June 15 | 7 pm

Suggested Donation $8/ students $5

The award winning Radio Diaries empowers people to “become reporters of their own lives”–then airs their stories on National Public Radio. Finding voices that often go unheard- teenagers, prisoners, AIDS patients- Radio Diaries trains people to share their stories by keeping audio journals, interviewing the people close to them and recording their daily life.

Thembi’s AIDS Diary documents a year in the life of a South African teenager who has AIDS.

And since 1996, Teenage Diaries has worked with teenagers across the country to report on their own lives and unique circumstances, eventually airing them as radio documentaries for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.

Please join Radio Diaries producer Joe Richman as he plays selections from Thembi’s AIDS Diary and Teenage Diaries, as well some other recent work, as part of the Audio Series Doc Bodega at UnionDocs.

Learn more about Radio Diaries and listen to some stories.

Here is an event I am curating at UnionDocs as part of their Documentary Bodega Series:

Will the Real NPR Please Stand Up?

Neighborhood Public Radio

Monday April 14 | 8 pm

@UnionDocs
$5 suggested admission.

Meet the new NPR on the block: Neighborhood Public Radio. An artist run radio project now broadcasting live from a former shoe storefront at The Whitney Biennial, NPR provides an alternative media platform to community artists and musicians, activists, and local residents. By opening up the channels of communication through both internet streams and a micro-powered signal, Neighborhood Public Radio creates a kind of open radiophonic space: one free of FCC rules and regulations, corporate underwriters, and, well, any editorial involvement whatsoever. The motto for NPR is: “If it’s in the neighborhood and it makes noise .. we hope to put it on the air.”

For their current production, titled “American Life” in association with the Whitney Biennial, NPR broadcasts live from the Madison Avenue storefront and invites anyone passing by to tell stories, perform, interview, or just talk. They have also developed boxed broadcasting kits that they will distribute in cities across the country. NPR founders Lee Montgomery and Jon Brumit will be on hand to discuss their project, recall some memorable locally-produced radio moments and respond to a piece about them recently aired on that other NPR . They’ll also play audio from other recent community-based transmission arts projects including State of Mind Stations and Talking Homes.

After the presentation there will be a casual collaborative talk in the yard over snacks and beer about the future of transmission arts with free103point9 in Brooklyn, NY.

I just got a job at UnionDocs. UnionDocs a documentary arts collective and studio space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (and in fact only blocks from my place!). They also run a residency program, six documentarians live upstairs and collaborate in curating screenings every week of feature length documentaries, with the director around for a post screening discussion.

There is also a studio space and loads of resources for artists and filmakers in the community.

I am proud to be representing this totally unique documentary arts organization!!!