Ten participants were chosen in early 2016 from new and emerging community radio producers around Australia, who had submitted an idea for a feature.
The National Features and Documentary Series aim was to encourage storytelling from new and emerging producers around the country.
They were then trained and mentored by the Community Media Training Organisation to turn their idea into reality for a national audience and through the productions, explore concepts across identity, memory, science, relationships and much more.
Thanh Hằng Phạm from 3CR‘s feature is titled “Remotely Intimate”.
“Remotely Intimate began in my hometown, Melbourne, but four months later I travelled to where my heart yearned for the most — Southern California and Seattle Washington. This documentary was finished and submitted on September 12th at 23:51 PDT in Seattle where I first met my 88% match. “
Juan Guerra from North West FM‘s feature is titled “BioHacker Oz”.
“One night, eighteen months ago, I caught a media report on the rise and dissemination of biotechnologies amongst everyday people around the world. The report did not mention Australia at all, and it struck me like a thunderbolt that biotechnologies not only would not only change industry, but that it would change the planet on a very local, personal scale – which meant you and me.”
Michael Schubert from Bay FM’s feature is titled In “Search Of Silence”.
“Do you want to hear all about silence? Perhaps silence is simply the absence of sound. Not noise. But is that it? I’m on a quest in search of silence, to explore the views of those who work with sound, and those who deal with silence. The quest will take me to the quietest rooms and the noisiest streets, in search of silence. “
Coel Healy from RTRFM titled his feature “Clay Pot Melody”.
“For the past two years I’ve been following the Burundi Band and Peace choir. I first heard their music from a sample CD released by the Denmark Festival of Voice, which was played on a community radio station here in Perth.”
Robert Salt from DCFM‘s feature is titled “Aboriginality” exploring the complex matter of Aboriginal identity, or what is also termed Aboriginality.
Caroline Savransky and Kate Wadey’s ““All About Abilities explores what exactly it’s like to run a program and produce a broadcast made entirely by adults with varying abilities.
Nancy Lin from 3RRR titled her feature “Hello Yes No Goodbye”.
“When I was 16, my dead cousin spoke to me… after my friends and I tried summoning dead spirits into the human world. Using a ouija board we’d created ourselves, we conducted a seance in a shed in my friend’s backyard. A ouija board, also known as a ‘talking board’, is used for communicating with spirits of the deceased. It contains the words HELLO, YES, NO, GOODBYE, all the letters of the alphabet, and the numbers 0-9. You use a small piece of wood or plastic, also known as a ‘planchette’, which is supposed to move around the board and ‘communicate’ its message to you… S P O O K Y. “
Leah Blankendaal from 3MBS Fine Music Melbourne & Radio Adelaide asks “How would you describe your relationship your parents? Or your kids? Has this relationship changed from that which it was, say, ten years ago? Or twenty years ago? How will it change in the next ten years?
A Way to Tie the Knot? by Vanita Sathasivam from 3RRR explores the “quest to partner up in some form of a relationship. “
Sarah Martin from Radio Adelaide’s feature is titled “Food For Thought”.
“If you asked me my thoughts on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) a couple of years ago, I would have automatically said I didn’t like them and babbled something about messing with nature. Since then, I produced a radio program that focused on agricultural science. Through speaking with researchers I discovered that GMOs could deliver benefits like salt and drought tolerance for crops in the face of climate change and lower dependency on herbicides.”