In August 2017, I moved to Asheville, NC, to launch the position of Arts & Culture Producer with Blue Ridge Public Radio. Over 5-1/2 years, I covered Asheville’s fertile arts community through broadcast stories, videos, special programming and online written articles.
Here’s a deep collection of my work for the station.
Special Programs
I produced every element of two hour-long programs for BPR’s “The Porch.”
The first focused on artists of this region coping with their mental health through a year of turmoil. You’ll hear stories from several artists from this region, along with research and thoughts from psychologists both about the trope connecting artists and mood disorders and alternatives to traditional counseling.
The second posed the question: If communities benefit from the work and presence of artists, what is our collective responsibility to publicly pay for the arts? I spoke with local and national arts advocates and also with random people in public.
The Porch: Artists Coping With Their Mental Health Through A Year Of Turmoil
The Porch: What Is Our Collective Responsibility To Fund The Arts?
Community Forum: The Future of Policing
I stepped outside my arts world to produce a Facebook Live public forum on the future of policing in Asheville. Blue Ridge Public Radio had never produced an event like this and, to my knowledge, neither had another public radio station in the country. I’m pretty proud of the content, and guests on both side of this contentious issue commented to me after the fact to express their satisfaction with how it went:
The forum lasted nearly two hours, and I edited it down to an hour for broadcast the following week over BPR’s airwaves. Despite the length, it performed really well, both in real time and in the subsequent three weeks: 4,600+ unique viewers, 450+ comments and 66 shares (all highs for Blue Ridge Public Radio content):
Here’s the investigative story I produced about artist compensation in relation to the Asheville Art Museum exhibition “Appalachia Now!”
Matt Peiken 