How Blue Ridge Public Radio is connecting with younger audiences through writing workshops and community partnerships
Students at one of Blue Ridge Public Radio’s StoryCraft writing workshops, a program created in partnership with Asheville Writers In The Schools and Community (AWITSC) | Photo courtesy Blue Ridge Public Radio
Since the summer of 2021, Blue Ridge Public Radio in Asheville, North Carolina has been working to connect with younger audiences in the region through their StoryCraft initiative as well as through writing workshops and camps. The goal of the project is two-fold: build a foundation of trust and media literacy, as well as teach strong writing and storytelling skills. What’s more, the kids and teens who participate get to create something lasting that enriches their communities. BPR’s Director of Content Catherine Komp told us how the project came together and what they’re working on next.
Tell us who you are, and share a brief summary of the project?
Blue Ridge Public Radio (BPR) serves 13 different counties in Western North Carolina with our two broadcast channels, BPR News & BPR Classic. Our studios are based in Asheville, but we know it’s critical to have a presence outside the metro area — so four years ago, we hired a full-time reporter to be based in Sylva, North Carolina.
BPR’s project with America Amplified is youth engagement. We started by using NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge as a way to build relationships with local educators and young people. We promoted the challenge on the air, and offered to give presentations and mentor any classrooms that wanted to work on submissions. We connected with teachers and youth, and shared some of their podcasts on-air.
From there, we approached a local organization about partnering on a series of workshops for local youth. Asheville Writers in the Schools and Community is a local non-profit with deep connections to area youth and families and that provides really innovative arts and culture programs rooted in social justice and racial equity. Together, we created a pilot program of youth storytelling workshops called StoryCraft that we held in summer 2021 and that led to a four part on-air series celebrating the poems created by the middle schoolers we worked with. We’re building on that this year with both one-on-one mentoring and another series of youth workshops now during the summer of 2022.
How did community engagement inform your project?
We heard from community members during a listening session in 2020 that they wanted to see BPR play a bigger role in training youth and making space for them on our platforms. Their input was practical and powerful:
“If you want to remain vibrant and relevant, you really need to take your cue from the younger generation.”
“Let's invite youth to the table. Let them teach us something. They got a lot to teach. They really do.”
"Train new talent, create a pipeline of younger people who can participate in this process.”
Since becoming an America Amplified station, we’ve expanded our youth engagement outreach, giving a climate communication presentation to Macon County Schools during its Sustainability Summit; talking with the facilitators of the Cherokee Youth Council about supporting them on a community listening project; and chatting with United Way of Asheville and Buncombe County about opportunities to connect with their own youth-focused initiatives. We’re still in the relationship-building stage in many of these discussions but we hope we can continue to build on these connections.
How did you build trust with the organizations and communities you work with?
Building trust with communities and organizations is like any relationship – it takes time, being consistent and showing up, approaching everything with equity in mind, and just being genuinely interested in and supportive of the people you’re collaborating with. For BPR, it was really important that we brought money to the table in our partnership with Asheville Writers in the Schools and Community, to help offset the costs of equipment, paying artist mentors who were working with the youth and to compensate the youth for creating content for BPR to distribute.
How are you bringing this work back to the community?
The youth content created during StoryCraft 2021 was shared on-air, digitally and in two art exhibits in Asheville. We hope that this year we can hold a showcase at a local venue to celebrate and uplift these talented young people.
What lessons do you take away from this project in terms of strengthening your engagement?
One of the biggest lessons is how important it is to weave engagement into more facets of what we do as a public media organization. From call-outs on the air to gather questions about COVID or elections, to asking listeners to record audio diaries, to inviting the public to contribute information when doing accountability reporting, there are many daily ways to reinforce to the public that they play a key role in shaping public media. But — we also need to prioritize the audiences we’re not currently reaching, and that’s where America Amplified’s tools and training have really helped BPR see what is possible
