Frontier of Change
Frontier of Change is an award-winning project that documents climate change in rural Alaska’s Indigenous communities. Over the course of 9 months, Future Projects worked with community partners including KNBA, Alaska’s largest native-owned station, The Anchorage Museum and others to tell urgent stories from the front lines of climate change through radio broadcasts, podcasts, video and unique immersive events. Funded by The Association of Independents in Radio competitive “Localore: Finding America,” a national storytelling initiative to diversify, deepen and innovate within public media.
In rural Alaska, climate and culture are inextricably linked, and the gulf between urban and rural residents is perhaps the most pronounced in the country.
AMPLIFYING VOICES
The radio broadcasts featured voices rarely heard in public media, reflecting openly and honestly on changes to their environment. In some cases, recorders were mailed out to young aspiring reporters so they could conduct interviews with family members. A short series of informal conversational podcasts provided a candid window into Alaska native life as it’s really lived and experienced. And a short video documented the changes to Qagruq, a whaling festival in Alaska’s far northern arctic.
IN THEIR SHOES
The centerpiece of the project was a series of immersive events at the Anchorage Museum. The first, Shaktoolik Soundwalk, was a 30-minute audio tour, where participants walked a mile in downtown Anchorage, while their ears were transported to the small village of Shaktoolik, which will soon be underwater due to erosion and sea-level rise. The tour was self-guided for the duration of the project, but a special guided tour was offered for the museum’s monthly “first Friday” programming.
LIVING THE PAST & FUTURE
Other events included an audio scavenger hunt that took participants on a journey through the past and future of Anchorage, collecting custom prints from local artists along the way. The final event was a red carpet movie premiere and community discussion, centered around a video from Joel de Jesus, who returned to his village of Point Hope for the first time in 15 years to document the whaling feast.
Listening to the City Handbook (MIT CoLab; pp 70, 72-73, 82-83); Localore’s Frontier of Change Creates “Audio Virtual Reality” (Current); Art of an Avant-Garde Arctic in Downtown Anchorage (Alaska Public Media)
Excellence in Audio Digital Storytelling Award (Online Journalism Association), Goldie Award (Alaska Broadcasters Association), Best Multimedia Presentation and Best Comprehensive Coverage (Alaska Press Club)
Future Projects is represented by CAA.
LET’S WORK TOGETHER
Future Projects is a full-service audio production house that creates immersive, deeply reported audio stories for radio, podcasts, museums, classrooms and more. We produce independent projects and work with clients from concept development through final production. We are also available for teaching, guest lecturing and consulting services.
