Over two months, Multicultural Arts Victoria worked in partnership with presenters and producers Madeleine Macfarlane and Jess Fairfax at PBS to deliver a ‘Collaborative Radio Project’ – an audio documentary and storytelling program with emerging, refugee and asylum seeker communities in Melbourne. The program enabled PBS to link to new voices, representing diverse musical styles, while providing these communities with an opportunity to share their own stories through the accessible medium of radio.

The program delivered eight weeks of skills training in storytelling, sound, editing, broadcast law, recording technique and live radio presentation. Following the workshops, participants were linked one-on-one with professional radio makers from PBS, ABC RN and SYN FM, who guided and supported them to create their own radio story.

A mix of personal narrative and documentary, the pieces draw on experiences of migration, the importance of music in new homelands, tales of local success, and soundscapes that will transport you amongst the cows, children and traditional song of the Ethiopian countryside.

The program was shared on All Our Stories, Mondays on PBS.