Showcasing independent artists

Along with countless hours of staff-produced broadcasts, All Things Considered frequently airs stories and documentaries produced by independent companies. Their work -- often award-winning, always riveting -- adds much to the ATC experience. Here are a few of those independent production companies, and some of their stories that have aired on ATC:

DC Productions | Lost & Found Sound | Radio Diaries | Sound Portraits

Long Haul Productions
http://www.longhaulpro.com/

DC Productions is a non-profit media production company headed by producer Dan Collison. It creates highly textured, carefully crafted, intimate radio and film documentaries that shine a light on people and places often overlooked. Founded by Dan Collison, DC Productions seeks to explore the diversity and complexity of American life by introducing voices and perspectives rarely heard. Here's a sample of some of the documentaries that have aired on All Things Considered:

Mom's Good Move
Dan's mother, Peg Collison, made the decision to move into a retirement home. At the age of 79, Peg and her companion Chaz, left the only home she'd known for 35 years, and moved into a newly built retirement community two hours away from her house, her friends, her church and the children she tutored. Dan told her story in three parts for NPR's The Changing Face of America series. Visit the Web page created at NPR Online and hear the individual segments:

The Decision
October 24, 2000
In part 1, Peg explains the reasons for her move; her children react; and she says goodbye to her church and to her friends.

Downsizing
October 25, 2000
Peg sorts through nearly 35 years of her life in California to decide what to keep and what to leave behind.

Moving In
October 26, 2000
In the final segment, Peg bids an emotional farewell to the house she has grown to love; she and Chaz settle into their new apartment in the retirement community.

Execution Day: Huntsville, Texas
April, 1998

Since the death penalty was restored in 1976, a third of the 450 executions in the United States have taken place in Texas. The Texas death chamber is located in the town of Huntsville. In March, 1997, Karla Faye Tucker became the first woman to be executed in Texas since the Civil War. News organizations from around the world descended on Huntsville, but most of the time, executions there go largely unnoticed. Listen to the story as producer Dan Collison takes us through a typical execution day: when many towns-people are unaware of what is happening just down the block. Local news organizations have been told they should stop reporting on every execution, and few death penalty protestors bother to show up.

On the Bus, Part 1
July 14, 1997

We'll hear the first in a series of reports from radio producer Dan Collison. He's riding buses coast-to-coast, collecting stories. Today, he talks with an elderly woman and her adult son, who are on their way home to Kentucky. He left a halfway house in Lexington and ended up on the streets of New York, then in Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital. She set off by herself to bring him home.

On the Bus: Boot Camp
July 21, 1997

In part two, Collison meets a young man from rural Tennessee on his way to Memphis to be inducted into the US Army -- and two others who've just returned from boot camp.

A Danger to Self and Others
July 6, 1999

 
Collison has a profile of the Cook County Jail in Chicago and its population of mentally ill inmates. Like other jails around the nation, Cook County is the state's largest mental health provider--10% of the jail's 10,000 detainees are getting some kind of mental health treatment. The doctors and health workers on staff at the prison perform a kind of emergency triage at in-take where they interview detainees and must quickly decide if they are legitimate mental health cases and deserve to be placed in a special unit --away from the prison's general population, where they receive treatment and therapy for their illnesses. They receive one on one counseling, group therapy and drug therapy.

 
Lost & Found Sound
http://www.npr.org/programs/lnfsound/

Beginning in January 1999, All Things Considered aired Lost & Found Sound, a special year-long series of richly layered stories that chronicle, reflect and celebrate the changing century through sound.

Lost & Found Sound is a national collaboration of radio producers, artists, journalists, sound collectors, film sound designers, public radio listeners and NPR. Executive producers Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva, The Kitchen Sisters, and Jay Allison, oversaw this millennial collaboration and worked with independent radio producers, creative artists, National Public Radio, individual stations and listeners to create the imaginative series.

 
Radio Diaries
http://www.radiodiaries.org/

Radio Diaries, Inc., founded by Joe Richman, is a non-profit production company that works with people from all walks of life and helps them document their lives. Radio Diaries' mission is to "find extraordinary stories in ordinary places, and preserve these voices for generations to come." Listen to selected stories:

Prison Diaries
January, 2001
For six months over the course of a year, five inmates, four correctional officers and a judge used tape recorders to keep audio journals. The diarists recorded the sounds and scenes of everyday life behind bars: shakedowns, new inmate arrivals, roll call, monthly family visits, meals at the chow hall, and quiet moments late at night inside a cell. Prison Diaries takes place inside two correctional facilities: Polk Youth Institution in Butner, North Carolina, and the Rhode Island Training School (for juveniles) in Cranston, Rhode Island. Find out more about the series and the diarists.

American Diaries: Diary of a Retirement Home
August 10, 1998
Residents of Presbyterian Homes in Evanston, Illinois talk about home, friendship, love and loneliness. This is the first installment of "American Diaries," a new series produced by Joe Richman.

Teenage Diaries
A group of teenagers were gathered from around the country and put to work as beat reporters for National Public Radio. The beat was themselves. Each teenage diarist was given a tape recorder for three months to a year. They did interviews with family and friends, kept an audio journal, and recorded the sounds of daily life. Here's just a few of their reports:

Teenage Diary
September 28, 1999
Hear the audio diary of teenager Nick Epperson of Salt Lake City, Utah. Epperson has recorded much of his journey through adolescence. Feeling isolated and friendless, he decided to drop out of junior high to try home schooling.

Teenage Diary
December 22, 1997
In Mentone, Alabama, teenager Frankie Lewchuk is already looking ahead to next season playing football with the Valley Head Tigers. The game is his ticket to popularity and high school success. We'll hear about Frankie's life in his own words.

 
Sound Portraits
http://soundportraits.org/

MacArthur Fellow David Isay established Sound Portraits as a non-profit independent production company designed to bring neglected American voices to a national audience. Among the Isay productions that have aired on All Things Considered:

Hear the broadcast of Witness to an Execution and visit the Web site http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/witness/.

Hear the broadcast of Ghetto Life and visit the Web site http://soundportraits.org/on-air/ghetto_life_101/.

Contents Copyright 2001, National Public Radio