Jazz88 and Minneapolis Public Schools Students are launching a 24/7 audio livestream filled with content produced by Minneapolis Public Schools students and staff. The livestream will be called MPS Voices (MPS Voices is a similarly named but different outlet than Minneapolis Schools Voices).
Jazz88’s executive producer Manny Hill used to bring students into the Jazz88 studio to learn about radio broadcasting through a career technical education class at North High School. Now, Hill is now leading the outreach ahead of the project’s launch when students return to classes during the first week of January.
“We’re offering a lot of different opportunities for really everybody in the school district to showcase their skills and their talents and to have some fun with it and express themselves,” Hill said.
The project is an effort to provide a platform for students and staff to express themselves, something that Jazz88 station manager Dan Larkin said became a necessity after the uprising following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
The livestream will provide space for MPS kids and adults alike to share their thoughts and experiences.
“There will probably be some tough conversations that come out of this too, and we welcome all of it. That’s what we should be, if we’re really serving the Minneapolis school district,” Larkin said.
KBEM, or Jazz88, has a 50-plus year history of collaboration with Minneapolis Public Schools. Larkin said that students in the 1970s were able to hear class lessons through the radio when they couldn’t be at school. Later, student DJs joined the station for their own broadcasting time. After the station became jazz-focused, they lost some of the connection with MPS.
The livestream is a return to the historical relationship between MPS and KBEM.
“This MPS Voices initiative that Manny is spearheading is bringing us back to our roots, only on steroids,” Larkin said.
Hill said that the early months of the livestream will consist mostly of hip-hop and R&B music, since participants’ broadcasts will take time to conceptualize and create, but that there’s plenty of opportunity for MPS kids and staff to produce whatever they want. Hill will help coach and train podcasters to improve their work.
The project received grants, State contributions, and donations from Jazz88 listeners to buy podcast equipment. Jazz88 will use the podcast studio that already exists at the new Hall STEM Academy to produce some of the content. The equipment can also be used by students to create podcasts remotely.
North High School is also undergoing an expansion that will provide space for a creative media class for students to learn about broadcasting, among other topics. Larkin expects that the students in the class will have a special interest in the MPS Voices livestream, though it is not a requirement for students to take the class in order to contribute.
Though the radio industry is dwindling as young people turn to streaming, Larkin said that the MPS Voices livestream will teach young people valuable skills that keep up with constantly developing trends and technology. Larkin himself got his first taste of producing radio in high school and stuck with it ever since.
“We are evolving with the changing world and the changing technology at the same time to try to offer some place to get this type of real-world training,” he said.
Hill’s goals are for students to feel ownership of their work on MPS Voices, and that they can produce something they’re proud of that can be heard by friends and relatives across the world via the online livestream. He wants to get students, educators and administrators from every MPS school to participate in the livestream, and so far in his outreach he’s heard lots of excitement from the district.
“At this district in particular, there are so many kids that have so much talent and so much ability, and I don’t think that they’ve gotten this sort of a platform to really showcase that,” Hill said. “The ultimate mission of this is that we want these kids to be able to express themselves in a way that they haven’t had the opportunity to do before.”
Once the project takes off, Larkin hopes to broadcast the livestream as an HD radio station. Students will also have the opportunity to contribute to social media and marketing for MPS Voices. Hill is already working alongside the MPS communications department to get the word out about the upcoming launch to participants and audiences.
As for content, Hill and Larkin said that they’re open to anything from comedy to cats to reading the school lunch menu in the morning. Hill said that athletic directors have contacted him about producing play-by-plays of school sports. With a 24/7 livestream available to participants, there are plenty of opportunities for creativity and experimentation.
“Yes to almost everything,” Larkin said. “Will it all be great, major market, professionally done? No, but that’s not the point. It’s giving a voice to the community, giving a voice to special interests, giving a voice to students and letting them learn how to entertain too.”
If you’re an MPS student or staffer with an idea for MPS Voices programming, contact Manny Hill at Emmanuel.Hill@mpls.k12.mn.us. Once the livestream launches, it will be available at mpsvoices.com and jazz88.fm.