KBFT Projects
Native Music Fest Series: KBFT will produce seven (7) live in-person and/or virtual Native American Musical Performance Events for local and regional public to learn from and enjoy in FY22. The project will include performances featuring different Native American musicians contracted to perform one to two-hour concerts. In FY22, KBFT will also produce seven (7) 5-minute radio segments of Native Fest Music Series, a collection of interviews and songs, featuring Native musicians, writers, storytellers, and songwriters.
Native Writing Fest Series: KBFT will host three (3) Native American Author and Writing Events featuring presentations from Indigenous writers, authors, and artists throughout Native country in FY22. The events will be open to the public. KBFT will record presentations and interviews and create three (3) 5-minute segments for later broadcast on the station.
Anishinaabemoen: KBFT will produce and air two hundred and ten (210) daily 30-second segments in FY22. The segments are designed to teach and preserve the Ojibwe language.
Outdoor Series: KBFT will invite community members to discuss and explore traditional Native American hunting, fishing, netting, trapping, snaring, plant identification, gathering, harvesting as well as modern-day activities that have become a part of Native culture like snowmobiling, sledding, skating, skiing, sled dogging, orienteering, and survival techniques and skills. The goal is to create a historical discussion and provide a look into Minnesota's outdoor heritage from a Bois Forte perspective. In FY22 KBFT will do this through ten (10) 5-minute radio segments.
Baapiidiwin - A series of interviews and performances showing how comedy and laughter is the centerpiece of social interactions in Native cultures. Laughter is considered to be the lubricant that helps lead to community healing. It is interwoven into relationships. In Native communities, comedy is not a career, it is a calling to help keep the community healthy. now more than ever, our community needs healing. This project will showcase some of the state's Native comedians who are using their talents to help us cope with the pandemic. The project will include a series of five (5) performances (live or virtual) that will be 10- to 15-minutes long. In addition, KBFT will create five (5) on-air segments that will be five- to ten-minutes long.
Virtual Storytelling-
Winter Storytelling has always been a part of Ojibwe Culture. KBFT will produce an event that will give the Ojibwe people, and people of different communities, a chance to be a part of Anishinaabe/Ojibwe Traditions. KBFT Virtual Storytelling will be a Live/Traditional Ojibwe Storytelling held on KBFT Facebook Live and YouTube for everyone to lean from and enjoy despite the pandemic. The project will result in one 30-minute radio program and one live event that will be approximately two-hours long.
Bois Forte Artist Profiles :
All Minnesotans are struggling as a result of the pandemic. But, COVID-19 is hitting Minnesota artists especially hard leaving them with very few venues in which to perform and/or display their work. KBFT's Bois Forte Artist Profiles will showcase artists in their area, significantly increasing exposure of their work which will hopefully increase their opportunity to earn income from the art and music they create. KBFT's outputs for this project will be seven on-air artist profiles that will each be five- to 10-minutes long.
Bois Forte Community Pow Wow Broadcast:
A KBFT Live Radio Broadcast event of one Pow-Wow held on the Bois Forte Reservation or Lake Vermilion. The event will feature "special guest" commentators known in Indian Communities and the Pow-Wow Circles.
Pow Wow Book: KBFT will provide readers and listeners with the opportunity to learn about the traditional elements of a Pow Wow, what dancers wear at a Pow Wow, Pow Wow etiquette and protocols, traditional Pow Wow foods, and more. In addition to creating the Pow Wow book, which the station will provide free to community members, in FY22 KBFT will also create a short radio segment to promote the book and share the cultural information with listeners who don't get a copy of the free book.
Ampers Legacy Group Project
$1,891,500 the first year and $1,891,500 the second year are to the Association of Minnesota Public Educational Radio Stations for production and acquisition grants in accordance with Minnesota Statutes, section 129D.19.
The programs in project #2 will result in more locally and Minnesota-focused content produced by public radio than would exist on KBFT without Legacy funding.
Surveys at the events will indicate that more Minnesotans of all ages, ethnicities, and incomes had increased access to the arts, culture, and history than they would have if the programs in project #2 were not produced.
Tracking the number of artists featured will show more Minnesota artists and musicians will have their work showcased through public media, giving them direct exposure to a much larger audience than they would have access to without these programs.