Just like that, VOICES Radio Hour is ready for its third season in 2025. The total of 23 episodes to date are a celebration of all the voices integral to our community. They are voices and stories of our sages, our youth, our teachers, students, moms and dads, neighbors, newcomers, men, women and queer. They come from all walks of life and all parts of the community.
How fortunate we are to be invited into each other’s storyline. The December episode airing from 6-7 pm this Friday, Dec. 20, on KDNK Community Access Radio will be “2024 In Retrospect,” featuring stories from past episodes, including: “What We Look Forward To”; “Singlehood”; “Conversations with Venezuela Newcomers”; “Theater Magic”; “Authenticity”; “Where I Am From”; and many more. The storytellers include Joan Lamont, Brian Colley, Gabrielle Bailes, Elsa Cordero, Lindsey Gurley, Lucas De Cesco and Zoe Rom.
VOICES Radio Hour is a response to our intrinsic need to share stories. The project has been blessed with the opportunity to collaborate with Jennifer Austin Hughes, the founder and director of SoL Theatre Company and Creative Archeology. Hughes will be stepping in as Project Director for VOICES Radio Hour’s 2025 season, providing the platform to preserve our oral history of who we are, where we come from and who we aspire to be — all through the tradition of storytelling.
“The last two years have been such a gift, getting to know so many community members and their individual stories,” Hughes remarked. “I look forward to finding ways to not only continue that, but create the space for important conversations, so we can better know one another and realize how much more connects us than divides us.”
The 2025 season of VOICES Radio Hour will comprise “Cross-Table Conversations,” a Spanish-speaking series, “Who Is Your Neighbor” interviews and “Stories & Music Episodes.” “Cross-Table Conversations” will offer a unique opportunity to dive into difficult, challenging and often controversial and conflicting topics such as politics, faith and immigration, discovering layers of humanities within us with voices from opposite sides.
The Spanish-speaking series will be entirely in Spanish, and facilitators will seek out opportunities to collaborate with partners such as La Tricolor Radio. This series will focus on youth, families and newcomers from the Spanish-speaking community.
“Who Is Your Neighbor” is an interview-style series that fosters intergenerational and multi-cultural dialogues. “Stories & Music Episodes” will be highlighting storytellers and musicians from our community under different themes, celebrating curiosity, diversity and creativity.
VOICES greatly appreciates the partnership with KDNK, The Sopris Sun and Sol de Valle in airing, publishing and sharing these stories on various platforms.
All of the previous episodes can be found in the archive on VOICES’ website (www.voicesrfv.org) under the “In Community” tab. A special space in our heart is saved for Joan Lamont, who left the earth earlier this year and whose humor, love, bright spirit and voice is deeply missed. You can hear her in both “The Things We Left Behind” in the February 2023 episode and “What We Look Forward To” in the January 2024 episode.
Tune in for the December VOICES Radio Hour episode, “2024 In Retrospect,” airing this Friday, Dec. 20 on KDNK from 6 to 7pm. And stay tuned for more from VOICES Radio Hour coming to you every month on KDNK and in The Sopris Sun. For more information please go to www.voicesrfv.org
