March 28, 2014. It almost wasn’t Localore. Back in the summer of 2011, when AIR was designing its initiative pairing independent producers with local stations, “Purple Mountain” was one of the names proposed by a branding company; it captured the idealism, civic  intention and long view of what the core production team was focused on as we laid out Localore’s interconnected parts.

But the words “local” and “lore” spoke to both the problem we were addressing and solution we were proposing — taking local stations outside of their comfort zones by creating new integrated storytelling models to carry public media to new corners of their community.

The sprawling network of 10 skunkworks and 200 collaborators that eventually emerged was part multimedia production, part community-development blueprint, part new talent cultivation engine. From this new ecosystem, which now stretches from big cities to small towns of America, we see hopeful signs that the seeds we’ve planted to inspire change have begun to take root.

– See more at: To follow paths charted by Localore, consider these ‘new realities’