About

The Recollective is a multimedia storytelling collaborative made up of event and content producers. Founded in 2010, the group has produced projects for radio, the web, and live events. The five founding members, Jeremy Helton, Whitney Henry-Lester, Chaela Herridge-Meyer, Nina Porzucki, and Carl Scott first came together to produce a weeklong radio series for NPR member station WBFO 88.7. That award-winning series, “Sounds & Echoes: A Musical Portrait of Buffalo, NY” explored the rich culture and history of Buffalo through the lens of its vibrant but often unsung music scene. The series was featured on WBFO’s local broadcast of All Things Considered.

In 2012, the group spent part of the summer at the 4th & 1 Summer Football Camps. Held each July in Mt. Pleasant, Texas and East Lansing, Michigan, 4th & 1 is a free football camp for high school students from underrepresented communities. For one jam-packed week in July, the student-athletes received individualized football training and SAT/ACT tutoring. The Recollective opened each camp with a storytelling workshop and throughout the week mentored the student-athletes in interviewing and recording each other’s stories. Stories from the Texas camp were featured on Cowbird.com while the audio-postcard produced at the Michigan camp was featured on Youth Radio and Huffington Post. Audio slideshows from both camps blended snippets of interviews between student-athletes with beatbox and hip hop music.

The Recollective has produced audio-visual installations about immigrant communities, a documentary series and social media campaign about healthcare disparities, and was recently awarded a grant from the Kansas Humanities Council to produce a radio documentary about the EPA Superfund Site of Treece, Kansas.