Futuro Media Announces Community Podcast Lab in Boston

Creating an opportunity for people with no formal media training
to own and share stories of their communities

Boston, MA – May 15, 2018 – Futuro Media announces a groundbreaking new project in partnership with MASSCreative and hosted by the PRX Podcast Garage. Starting this fall, we will work with local Boston storytellers to create multimedia journalism that explores and gives a critical voice to the diversity of their experience. This hands-on 15-week program will train participants of color who have no prior formal experience in public media to create podcasts that will be distributed both locally and nationally.

“We are thrilled to be able to work with community partners like MASSCreative and local Boston residents to elevate voices that have traditionally been subjects of, but not creators of, public media. Our goal is to expand the depth and breadth of ideas, perspectives and ownership within the voices of public radio,” said Maria Hinojosa, Futuro Media’s Founder and President.

Participants will be paid by the hour to take part in the program, so that they will not have to choose between their craft and a wage. They will also receive personal support for their individual stories and ideas from world-class journalists. “By bringing award-winning journalists including our founder, Maria Hinojosa, and In The Thick co-host, Julio Ricardo Varela, we will help to ensure that our participants learn from the best and are empowered to speak their truths and share their stories,” said Futuro Media CEO and Executive Director, Erika Dilday.

The Community Podcast Lab will focus on the neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan and will be open to all residents from communities of color. Applications will be available and community partner organizations will be announced this summer. The Lab will begin in the fall. Central to the process is the involvement of the local partners, who will be paid a stipend to inform and support the creative process and will ultimately help to showcase participant projects within their neighborhoods.

“We work with artists and arts lovers to elevate discussion of creativity in our communities and know that art is a vital part of everyday life in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan,” said MASSCreative Executive Director Matt Wilson. “You’d never know it, though, based on media coverage of these communities, so we’re incredibly excited to work with Futuro Media Group and support efforts by artists of color to shape and share their stories.”

About Futuro Media:
Futuro Media is an independent nonprofit organization producing multimedia journalism that explores and gives a critical voice to the diversity of the American experience. Based in Harlem and founded in 2010 by award-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa, Futuro Media is committed to creating multimedia content for and about the new American mainstream in the service of empowering people to navigate the complexities of an increasingly diverse and connected world.

Futuro Media produces Peabody-award winning Latino USA, a national Latino news and cultural weekly radio program; America By The Numbers with Maria Hinojosa, a documentary series on PBS revealing the human stories behind America’s dramatic demographic changes; In The Thick, a political podcast from the perspective of journalists of color; and Humanizing America, a digital-shorts web series distributed by NBCNews.com that presents intimate profiles of diverse Americans.

For more information, visit http://futuromediagroup.org.

The Community Podcast Lab is made possible in part by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Heising-Simons Foundation.