The Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions has been awarded a $15,980 grant from the Ohio Humanities Council to produce the year-long podcast series about agriculture in Ohio “Grounded Hope.” The podcast will be developed in consultation with Beth Bridgeman, associate professor of Cooperative Education at Antioch, and Rick Livingston, Ph.D., assistant director of The Humanities Institute and senior lecturer at The Ohio State University, and it will be evaluated by Dr. Kevin McGruder, vice president of Academic Affairs and associate professor of History at Antioch.
Independent radio producer Renee Wilde will produce the podcast with the help of Bridgeman and Livingstone, who will frame the series in current and historical thought, identify interviewees, and help develop curricular materials for use in 4-H, Future Farmers of America, high schools, colleges, and educational programs.
Bridgeman explains: “Much of my scholarship centers a practice as a research model, and I am fortunate to be involved with a number of community-based projects at the Arthur Morgan Institute of Community Solutions.” Bridgeman is on the Arthur Morgan Institute of Community Solutions conference steering committee each year. She offered a three-day Seed School program this past fall, in addition to building the mud oven and other projects. The Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions, located in Yellow Springs, OH, is an 80-year-old nonprofit whose mission is to educate people about how to make their communities more resilient in the face of economic and climate disruptions.
“I had worked with independent public radio producer Renee Wilde before, when she interviewed me about my Oral History in the Liberal Arts research project: Re-establishing a Seed Commons through Oral History Methodology, in which my students interviewed seed-saving elders around the country.”
The Grounded Hope project, Bridgeman explains, appealed to her because it focuses on community and on hope. “It tells the stories of individuals and regenerative communities of practice.”
The podcast will be hosted through Public Radio Exchange (PRX) and Anchor, which will distribute to a number of channels such as Spotify and Apple Podcast.
