In addition to recording 25 conversations (listen here), we also did a live broadcast with One Small Step participants and community members joining the conversation by phone, and discussed our experiences with the project, personal takeaways, and how the project has affected us. You can listen to the show here.

In November 2023, we hosted a listening event at the Alamo Theatre in Bucksport to showcase our One Small Step conversations. In March 2024, we hosted a community supper and coffee hour in collaboration with the Belfast American Legion Hall, inspired by our work with One Small Step and by our friends at The Civic Standard, in Hardwick, VT, who work closely with the Hardwick American Legion. We were honored to have Tara Reese and Rose Friedman from the Civic Standard as our special guests, alongside Phil Mercier and Ashton Allen from the Hardwick Legion.

I created a landing page on WERU’s website to showcase the One Small Step conversations we recorded, demonstrate the idiosyncracies of what it meant to be the most rural radio station participating in One Small Step in 2023, and show the vast amount of terrain we covered.

As a facilitator for One Small Step, I matched partners and guided 50-minute conversations between strangers with differing political beliefs and values. Participants laughed, cried, disagreed, found common ground, and sometimes, exchanged contact information.

We recorded 25 conversations with 50 participants from 37 towns in 15 locations/venues. In addition to recording at the WERU studio, we recorded conversations at libraries, town offices, museums, the office of a rock shop, and a vacant storefront at a mini-mall. While location scouting wasn’t necessarily something we anticipated as part of this initiative, it became a fun aspect of the process as it provided additional opportunities to get the word out and helped make participation more accessible for a wider number of participants.