10/31 MAKER SESSIONS
The following Maker Sessions were presented on Saturday, October 31 from 10 AM - 6 PM CT. For our 10/24 Maker Sessions, click here.
How Voices of the Past Inform Our Present
9 AM CT on 10/31
Presented by Stacie Williams
Join Stacie Williams to discuss the role that archives and digital preservation play in creating inclusive histories and narratives that interrogate what we think we know about people's lives? Explore ways of activating your own media-related collections in ways that create conditions for justice and equality.
Stacie Williams (she/her) is director of the Center for Digital Scholarship at the University of Chicago Libraries. Through her work, she focuses on ethical labor and cultural production, and long-term maintenance of digital infrastructure.
She holds a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and an M.S. in Library Science with a concentration in Archives and Manuscripts Management from Simmons College.
She serves on the advisory board for the international Digital Library Federation and the Library of Congress’ National Digital Strategy Roundtable.
The Mud Keeps Sliding
12 PM CT on 10/31
Presented by Stan Alcorn, Leticia Duarte, and Luisa Beck
A return to the messiness of political reporting on the brink of this year’s Presidential Election, with a focus on what journalists & reporters have learned through tracing patterns of extremism and reporting meaningfully about it over the past few years. How and when should you spot extremism in your own communities, and what ethical and technical tools should you be equipped with to best follow these stories?
What can we be clear about as reporters and journalists, as we enter a period of political abyss and swelling anxiety?
Stan Alcorn (he/him) is a reporter and producer for Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, where he has reported on domestic terrorism, policing, immigration, climate change, historical memory, and government contracting. His work has won a Peabody Award, an NABJ Salute to Excellence Award, a Best of the West Award, and several Online Journalism Awards. He was also a finalist for a Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
Luisa Beck (she/her) is a reporter in The Washington Post’s Berlin bureau, where she covers politics, migration, history, art and the environment. Before joining The Post, she made audio stories for NPR, the Center for Investigative Reporting and podcasts such as 99% Invisible and Rough Translation.
Before she moved to Berlin, she could be found roaming the streets of San Francisco making audio walks for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the media start-up Detour. She moonlights as a poet and her latest project is Dear Poetry, an advice column that turns to poems for answers to callers' questions. She has taught and guest lectured at UC Berkeley, Stanford, California College of the Arts, and the Berlin Journalism School.
Letícia Duarte (she/her) is a Brazilian freelance journalist based in New York. Since 2018, she has investigated the social effects of rising authoritarianism in Brazil and in the US. She has been awarded numerous fellowships, including Democracy Undone: The Authoritarian's Playbook, a global reporting partnership between The GroundTruth Project and The Atlantic.
Recording podcasts in English and Portuguese, she reported on the issue of extrajudicial killings in the Brazilian favelas and profiled Olavo de Carvalho, the intellectual founder of Brazil’s extreme-right, who feeds the country’s disinformation machine from his home in Virginia. Letícia is currently a 2019 Global Migration Project reporting fellow at Columbia Journalism School in New York.
Babette Thomas and Laura Garbes discuss historical examples of Black and Indigenous radio programming in the 20th century that was used as both a mode of care and as a vehicle to raise political consciousness. After highlighting these cases, they trace glimmers of this radical potential in today's highly institutionalized audio industry. In a live session, they will then guide us through provocations for the group: How might we move towards these glimmers? What would it take to create a new world where such moments of potential become the industry standard?
Rekindle: Using Radical Soundwork of the Past to Guide Us Beyond the Present Reckoning
3 PM CT on 10/31
Presented by Laura Garbes & Babette Thomas
The “reckoning” in the media industry has laid bare the fact that audio is not meeting its radical potential. What can radical soundwork of the past teach us about how to navigate our present and map our collective future?
Babette Thomas and Laura Garbes discuss historical examples of Black and Indigenous radio programming in the 20th century that was used as both a mode of care and as a vehicle to raise political consciousness. After highlighting these cases, they trace glimmers of this radical potential in today's highly institutionalized audio industry. In a live session, they will then guide us through provocations for the group: How might we move towards these glimmers? What would it take to create a new world where such moments of potential become the industry standard?
Laura Garbes (she/her) is a PhD student in Sociology at Brown University. Her research focuses on the racialization of voice in public broadcasting and how that impacts both audiences and broadcasters of color. Laura is interested in the possibilities of thinking in sound, both in her own work and in her students' learning process.
Babette Thomas (they/them) is a writer, researcher, and radio producer/artist. Broadly interested in the intersections of Blackness and new media, Babette uses radio to tell stories about Black history in ways that are intimate, felt and embodied. Their research explores how Black radio programming historically, and presently, establishes networks of emotional and physical care between stations, hosts and listeners.
Appearances: A Very Non-Immaculate Conception Story
6 PM CT on 10/31
Presented by Sharon Mashihi, with Appearances associate producer Ari Mejia
After finally giving birth to her semi-autobiographical podcast and audio fiction experiment Appearances (Mermaid Palace, Radiotopia), creator, producer, and performer Sharon Mashihi hosts a participatory-performance-meets-artist-talk, exploring & exploding her world from the inside to spark the creative worlds inside you.
Sharon Mashihi (she/her) is an audio artist, screenwriter, and story editor. Most recently she was the creator of the audio fiction mind-trip, Appearances. Sharon has been a longtime editor at The Heart and was also editor of the CBC fictional series, The Shadows, as well as KCRW's Bodies.
In 2018, Sharon won Best Documentary: Silver at Third Coast for her documentary, Man Choubam (I Am Good).
