The Boiled Down Juice

The following information is taken from the Kentucky Folk Arts Grant I wrote to fund this portion of the summer’s work. This Program will be implemented in connection with Kentucky Remembers! —a summer youth project of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights.

This July, students from last year’s camps who want to pursue their research will come together for this one week Human Rights Leadership Camp. In the months prior to the camp, four students who expressed an interest and showed particular promise in working with oral history will receive Marantz recorders to document the sounds and stories of their community, including their own. To prepare for this work, the four selected students will attend a day-long preparatory session in which Martin will present examples of other youth radio podcasts and explain how oral history and folklife interviews can be turned into podcasts. Students will also explore the creativity and ethics involved in this storytelling process. By the end of the day, students will prepare a detailed plan of action for their upcoming field recordings and oral history interviews and will write up their goals and schedule for the final produced audio pieces to be created at the camp. Students will also commit to three critique/discussions sessions with Martin to make sure they are on track and moving forward with their work. During the week-long camp, the students will bring the audio they have collected and their ideas for podcast creation and continue the creative process of producing podcasts to be placed on the interactive Kentucky Remembers! webpage.

Inspired by youth radio and folklife programs across the nation, the “Listen Out Loud” program will allow students to tell the stories of social justice and cultural expression in Kentucky. Once complete these audio documents will be sent to local public radio stations for airplay and made available for use in the public schools and after school programs across the state as supplementary audio for the Kentucky Remembers! textbook. The audio products will also be available for free download on the Kentucky Remembers! webpage. Teachers or after school programs who wish to use the audio pieces but do not have computer access will be provided with copies as funding permits.