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Date: 10/27/2022
EAST LONGMEADOW – The East Longmeadow Council on Aging (COA) are in the beginning stages of creating their own podcast, “Stories from the View.” They are looking for seniors who interested in sharing their stories; pivot moments, stories of their families, anything that’s meaningful to them they would like to share in an interview style.
Director Erin Koebler stated, “Our goal is to connect seniors with the outside world; to decrease isolation by allowing seniors to share their stories and to make seniors feel heard.”
The idea came about through East Longmeadow Cable Access Television (ELCAT), the town of East Longmeadow’s public access broadcasting facility, from a studio located at East Longmeadow High School.
ELCAT has partnered with the Council on Aging on numerous programs and activities; documenting on video what they’re doing so people at home can watch it on cable access TV and share it through a wider audience. Last year, they set up a small podcast studio to help students in one of the English classes produce podcasts for an assignment.
Director Don Maki said, “At the same time, three other students came to me about adding podcast content to the traditional reporting for the Spartan Spectator, the venerable school paper. So, it was really the students who got the podcast idea started here at ELCAT, and they really seemed to like the format.”
He went on to say, “I started a channel on our YouTube page called ELCAT Radio. It struck me that it would be a great idea to do something similar at the COA, and I mentioned it to Erin Koebler over the summer.”
When school started, Maki also took on a student intern from Minnechaug Regional High School who was interested in producing podcasts. They came up with the idea of setting up initial meetings at the senior center, giving individuals a basic tutorial on how to produce a podcast, and ultimately training enough people to make it self-sustaining over time. The first training session starts the morning of Oct.28. The COA has a couple of seniors from the center who are interested in learning more about what a podcast is and being exposed to the world of podcasting.
Koebler explained, “We’re using that as a jumping off point to start to collect stories of the seniors who come to Pleasant View because so many of them have such interesting histories to share that we don’t always get to hear.” Though they don’t know what sort of stories people will share, or how they’ll use the medium, Maki said physically and technically, it’s very simple: two microphones and a laptop set up in a quiet space to record a conversation.
This podcast – as opposed to something that has a video attach to it – allows people to share their history in an authentic way; encouraging seniors simply to share with one another, experiences they’ve had; that can then be available to the larger community.
The COA’s goal is for this to be a monthly podcast and will be ready to collect stories by January of 2023. Once a few seniors are able to share their stories, Koebler said they will be their best advertisement in terms of sharing their experience with their friends and having other seniors participate.