1. Describe your overall goals and approach to address identified community issues, needs, and interests through your station’s vital local services, such as multiplatform long and short-form content, digital and in-person engagement, education services, community information, partnership support, and other activities, and audiences you reached or new audiences you engaged. Our overall goal is to connect northern Michigan and world. In news, this means providing the best public radio programming available, for national and international news, and being home to a small team of journalists able to do original, enterprise reporting and share stories on NPR and with other regional affiliates. Our music service is the hub of a musical community centered at Interlochen Center for the Arts. The station provides a showcase for a variety of musical artists both in the community and visiting, present and past through our vast archive. We strive to create engagement points for people to enjoy classical music who otherwise might not, like young families and video gamers.
2. Describe key initiatives and the variety of partners with whom you collaborated, including other public media outlets, community nonprofits, government agencies, educational institutions, the business community, teachers and parents, etc. This will illustrate the many ways you’re connected across the community and engaged with other important organizations in the area. We regularly collaborate in news production with other NPR affiliates through the Michigan Public Radio Network, especially with Michigan Radio by airing their daily show Stateside. Our music service collaborates widely with a range of music and civic groups from the local botanical garden to our hometown symphony orchestra. Our music director writes a monthly column in the local newspaper. 3. What impact did your key initiatives and partnerships have in your community? Describe any known measurable impact, such as increased awareness, learning or understanding about particular issues. Describe indicators of success, such as connecting people to needed resources or strengthening conversational ties across diverse neighborhoods. Did a partner see an increase in requests for related resources? Please include direct feedback from a partner(s) or from a person(s) served. We do not have an example of such a deep impact from a partnership. 4. Please describe any efforts (e.g. programming, production, engagement activities) you have made to investigate and/or meet the needs of minority and other diverse audiences (including, but not limited to, new immigrants, people for whom English is a second language and illiterate adults) during Fiscal Year 2014, and any plans you have made to meet the needs of these audiences during Fiscal Year 2015. If you regularly broadcast in a language other than English, please note the language broadcast. We partnered with the Mishigamiing Journalism project and commissioned feature reports from two of their reporters. In addition, we worked with a native language teacher to create radio spots teaching Anishinaabemowin. In 2022 we are working with a native-owned podcasting studio and invited NPR's Next Generation project to hold a Native American journalist training here. 5. Please assess the impact that your CPB funding had on your ability to serve your community. What were you able to do with your grant that you wouldn't be able to do if you didn't receive it? Without CPB funding we would be unable to produce most of our local journalism and our original classical music programs through our two channel service. We would likely be able to maintain a basic NPR service with flagship national shows and some music programming mixed into a single service stream. Basically, everything that is unique and local is made possible by CPB funding.
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