BRISTOL — Many of us know the feeling of sitting around a roaring campfire, sharing stories and singing songs with all those gathered together.

A group of residents is working to create a community radio station for the 5-Town area that replicates that feeling. The platform, Fireside Community Media, would serve as a communications hub for residents in the Bristol area and invite community members to contribute to the station in myriad ways.

“We need to take the future into our hands, and what better way to do that then to have a community radio station and to lift up the voices of our community, and I mean all our voices,” said Jonathan Corcoran, a Monkton resident and co-founder of the effort. “This is about raising our frequency, literally, above all the division and to see how much we all have in common and how we need each other.”

planting the seeds

The seeds for Fireside Community Media were first planted around 17 years ago and tied to the work of a few other community organizations. Back then Corcoran was working with others to establish what is now the Addison County Relocalization Network, a nonprofit committed to promoting “the growth and health of local food and agriculture in Vermont’s Champlain Valley.”

“We started ACORN because we saw…the cycles were all showing that there was going to be a massive shift decentralizing everything and that we needed to start building our local capacity to feed ourselves using local energy,” Corcoran explained.

Corcoran and other community members founded ACORN in 2009.

“All the way back there, there was this recognition that we were going through big, big changes, which I think everybody is feeling today,” Corcoran said. “It’s like the systems that we created after World War II were going to start failing, and that we would be returning to our communities and to the grassroots to kind of start over again and reconnect with place.”

Around the same time, Corcoran was involved in a couple of other initiatives centered around community. One was the Monkton Community Coffeehouse, a charitable nonprofit founded by the late Vermont balladeer Pete Sutherland and other community members in 2007.

The Monkton Community Coffeehouse aimed to build community and organized events like a chili cook-off, garlic festival and summer concert series with support from organizations around town. The nonprofit was inactive for several years but has more recently contributed to community efforts like the Monkton Dog Park and Monkton Day celebration.

Back in 2008, Corcoran was also working with David Brynn of Vermont Family Forests and the 2008 Addison County Conservation Congress to create “VISION 2020,” an imagination of the community in the year 2020 and recommendations for the steps it would take to get there.  The final report included input provided by 150 community members on areas like “health and wellness” and “community arts and culture.”

While involved in those efforts, Corcoran learned about the Prometheus Radio Project based in Philadelphia, a nonprofit that “builds, supports, and advocates for community radio stations that bring together and empower local, participatory voices and movements for social change.”

Corcoran joined the organization’s email list.

“15 years later, I got this email saying, ‘The (Federal Communications Commission) is opening spectrum up for community radio, you have three weeks to get an application in.’ So, I did it,” he recalled.

After receiving that email in November 2023, Corcoran worked over the course of the next three weeks to identify a nonprofit that would house the project, a location for a radio tower and to find an available frequency that wouldn’t interfere with existing ones.

The group received a license for the radio station in February 2024, and since then has been working to get the station up and running.

“We’re about a year and a half in, and we’ve been working on this now to really get clear what we’re trying to do,” Corcoran said.

He referred back to the start of ACORN and circumstances that set that effort in motion.

“We’re now at this point of disintegration of the framework of the society we’ve built since World War II,” he said. “For me, the theme always has been about coming home, and coming home to place, where we are, and to sink our roots in the soil here and grow our food, grow our community, and in a way to empower ourselves as the agents of change because we can’t rely on… Washington D.C. or even Montpelier.”

WORK IN PROGREESS

Corcoran has been working with a group of other community members on Fireside Community Media, including Jim Holway and Ferrisburgh resident Paul Kervick. Each founder brings their own expertise and experience to the table, such as Holway’s work with radio stations and Kervick’s career in holistic health.

The group shares a vision of creating a platform that gives voice to community members and their stories, interests and concerns.

“We want to have a vehicle for people to come in and talk about their stories,” Kervick said. “Everyone I know is having real challenges, and the world is getting tough out there. If we had a place that’s playing nourishing music, local businesspeople that want to share about how they’re contributing to the community, groups going to talk about healing and birthing…it really becomes a community creation.”

The platform is currently streaming online, and the group is working toward live over-the-air broadcasting. Kervick noted the team is working through the logistics of getting the radio tower set up. That tower is being donated by Dave Blittersdorf, president of All Earth Renewables, and the tower is expected to be located on Bristol’s Firehouse Drive near the site of All Earth Renewables.

Kervick noted the team had aimed to start broadcasting sometime this fall, though it’s more likely it will reach that goal next spring, depending on when the tower goes up. Once up and running, the station will broadcast on WVVT 94.7FM, along with offering digital streaming and podcasts on demand.

NEXT STEPS

As the team works to get the tower set up, it is also looking to raise funds to support the effort and connect with community members about the programming they’d like to hear.

The group has launched a Go Fund Me and is looking to raise $23,000 that would support the build-out to broadcast live over the air and equipment needed for the station’s studio on Bristol’s Munsill Avenue.

The team is also working to interview and connect with community members interested in creating a podcast or other programming through the radio station. Founders have noted future programming could include local news, music from area musicians, coverage of events and shows hosted by community members that center around their interests and experiences.

“It’s for your community; that’s the difference, that’s what it will look like,” Holway said.

Kervick noted the platform could help promote genuine conversations between neighbors and empower local voices.

“I think it’s important to help people realize that we can create beauty and abundance in our lives if we come together as a community, but we need to hear people’s voices, not just people in power and control but people in the community,” he said.

Corcoran said the team will look to hosts meetings with community members in each of the five towns of Bristol, Lincoln, Monkton, New Haven and Starksboro to invite interested residents to get involved.

“I just love the 5-Towns, and I think to me this is the vibration that we’re really bringing to this radio station, is the love of our community,” he said. “There are just so many wonderful people who live here, and we want to celebrate them, and we want to invite people to join.”

Corcoran used the metaphor of a campfire to describe where the team is currently at with the project and looking to go.

“We’re building a fire, and right now we have a little bit of tinder and a spark, but if this is going to grow, this is our invitation to the community; bring your contributions, bring your gifts,” he said. “We’re really calling on people’s inspiration and their caring for this place and for each other.”

To learn more about Fireside Community Media, visit www.firesidecommunitymedia.org.