BECAUSE DEMOCRACY MATTERS
Overview
The digital age has profoundly changed the function and future of media, journalism and democracy. In the wake of the dramatic restructuring of how we communicate and define our communities, what are the implications for democracy? How can alternative media awaken, educate and engage the electorate?
Join top progressive radio and television talk show host Thom Hartmann; Goddard alumna, former board member, and White House Correspondent and Bureau Chief for the Talk Radio News Service, Ellen Ratner; former President & Chief Executive Officer for the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, Maxie C Jackson III; and Bitch Media's co-founder and editorial/creative director Andi Zeisler while they, and others, talk about issues of ownership, community and activism in today's media landscape at the upcoming Alternative Media Conference at the Plainfield, VT campus.
Saturday's conference will kick off on the night of May 17 with a special live broadcast of the Thom Hartmann Program with Sen. Bernie Sanders at WGDR Studios, Goddard College Community Radio (91.1fm Plainfield, 91.7fm Hardwick) to celebrate their 40th anniversary of community radio!
Topics during the conference include:
The Other Voice in the Room: Why I’ve Dedicated My Life to Alternative Media
Thom Hartmann, The Thom Hartmann Program - 9:20 AM
The Alternative Media: Service, Engagment and Impact
Maxie Jackson, former NFCB president - 10:05 AM
Print is Still Alive and it is Pissed
Andi Zeisler, cofounder and editorial director of Bitch Media - 10:55 AM
Why Fake News Is Better Than Real News
Comedy writers and directors formerly from The Onion Newspaper and now working for AdultSwim.com - 1:30 PM
Free Information: Who Pays the Price
Members of Vermont's Alternative Media and Policy Experts - 1:30 PM
Videofreex Pirate TV Show (21st Century Re-edit)
With members of the pirate video collective founded at Woodstock and present at the original AMC conference - 3:00 PM
Practical Applications and Ethics of Investigative Reporting
Robbie Gordon, Media Studies Professor at Flagel College and former producer for Diane Sawyer
Throughout the day, The Combustible Cabaret/Digital Vaudeville will be in full swing with surprise performances. At 8PM the show will really kick off with a rapid succession of acts, short films and music. The show will interweave old-world street performance styles of kamishibai, cantastoria, and puppet shows with the future in multimedia, video projection, and hip-hop linguistics. All original works in quick succession. Hosted by Morgan Andrews. Curated by Ben t. Matchstick.
Watch the video of the crew making handprinted posters for the Combustible Cabaret/Digital Vaudeville.
Come to the event on May 18 to register
Goddard's original Alternative Media Conference, held June 17-20 in 1970, was one of the most influential alternative media events in the United States. It served as a catalyst for a generation of journalists and spawned some of the innovations and developments in social media and community radio that we see today.
The original AMC conference brought over 2,000 innovative FM radio DJs, a new breed of record company promoters, underground newspaper reporters, Freak Brothers cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, Baba Ram Dass, Rolling Stone photographer Robert Altman, and Marvel Comics’ Stan Lee all the way to Plainfield. This conference covered topics including women in the media, black-oriented radio and low-budget films.
Atlantic Records donated 5,000 dollars and shipped in Dr. John, Cactus and the J. Geils Band to put on concerts. Many conference attendees went on to exciting media careers, including Hendrik Hertzberg, a senior editor at The New Yorker, and Danny Goldberg, whose company has managed the careers of rockers Nirvana, the Allman Brothers and Bonnie Raitt. The conference is remembered as the birth of alternative media and continues to be held as a time that was rich in urgency for change.
The conference also largely inspired Goddard's community radio station WGDR. Which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.
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Thom Hartmann is live daily from 3-6 PM ET on radio and TV stations from coast to coast, syndicated by Dial-Global to commercial stations, Pacifica to non-profit stations, and Free Speech TV on Dish Network, DirectTV, and cable systems, as well as on American Forces Radio and on XM and Sirius Satellite radio. He is also a four-time Project Censored-award-winning, New York Times best-selling author. His national daily progressive radio talk show is now in its ninth year on the air. More people listen daily to the Thom Hartmann Program than any other progressive talk show in the nation. Talkers Magazine names Thom Hartmann as the 8th most important talk show host in America, and the #1 most important progressive host, for three consecutive years in their "Heavy Hundred" ranking. |
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Ellen Ratner is the White House Correspondent and Bureau Chief for The Talk Radio News Service, covering the White House and providing exclusive reports to talk radio stations from the Congress and government agencies. In addition, she is a credentialed reporter at the United Nations in New York where Talk Radio News Service has a bureau. Ratner is a news analyst on The Fox News Channel where she is currently seen on Foxnews.com and also on the channel on various programs. She is heard on over 400 radio stations across the United States. |
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Maxie C Jackson III is the former President & Chief Executive Officer of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters (NFCB). Jackson has served as Senior Director Program Development at New York Public Radio (WNYC) involved in strategic planning for national and local programming, outreach and audience development efforts, and new media and marketing initiatives. He was intimately involved in the launch of “The Takeaway” in addition to developing community engagement strategies and a new evening drive program for WNYC. |
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Andi Zeisler is the cofounder and editorial/creative director of Bitch Magazine. A longtime freelance writer and illustrator, Zeisler's work has appeared in numerous periodicals and newspapers, including Ms., Mother Jones, Utne and BUST. She is the coeditor of BitchFest: 10 Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine, and recently finished a book about feminism and popular culture for Seal Press. |
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Todd O’Boyle is Common Cause’s Program Director for Media and Democracy. He joined Common Cause in September 2012 and is responsible for research, advocacy, and strategy for media reform. Before joining Common Cause, O'Boyle worked as a political staffer. He has experience in grassroots political organizing and designing persuasive communications on the local, state, and federal level. He has a Ph.D. in Urban Affairs and Public Policy from the University of Delaware. |
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Sascha Stanton-Craven is the Post-Production Director and a writer for Adultswim.com. He worked at The Onion News Network from 2008-2011. He also has a tumblr blog called White-Out News that nobody knows about. Sascha grew up in Vermont, and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. |
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Daniel Mirk is a comedy writer living in Brooklyn. From 2007 to 2012 he was the Senior Writer for the Onion News Network web series and IFC television series of the same name. Recently he co-wrote The Onion News Empire for Amazon.com |
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John Harris is head writer at AdultSwim.com; he is a former senior writer for The Onion newspaper and staff writer for The Onion News Network on IFC. John is also a writer and editor for the recently released The Onion Book of Known Knowledge: A Definitive Encyclopaedia of Existing Information and editor-in-chief of the humor 'zine, Pendulous Breasts Quarterly. |
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Anne Galloway is the founder and editor of VTDigger.org and executive director of the nonprofit Vermont Journalism Trust. She has worked as a reporter and editor in Vermont for 17 years. Galloway was the editor of the Sunday Rutland Herald and Barre Times Argus from 2004 to 2009. Her reporting has appeared in The New York Times (the Vows column), the New York Daily News, Vermont Life and City Pages (Minneapolis). She is a member of Investigative Reporters and Editors. Galloway and her husband have two adult children. They live in East Hardwick. |
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Carmelo Ruiz (MA '95), is an investigative journalist who utilizes all forms of media, radio, printed media (magazines, newspapers), as well as twitter and blogs to explore issues related to food security and safety, the environment, and political rights. He is a research associate at the Institute for Social Ecology and a senior fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program. In the 1990´s he produced and hosted "Don´t Get Me Started", a talk show on Goddard´s radio station WGDR. |
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Karen Werner, Ph.D., is a sociologist, audio essay and digital story producer, and member of Goddard College's Undergraduate Faculty. Karen is a member of the Community Economies Collective and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and works at the intersection of activism and deep listening. She lives in western Massachusetts. |
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Shay Totten has more than 20 years experience in media, marketing, and strategic communications in both the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. He is currently an employee-owner at Chelsea Green Publishing where he works as the communications director. He is currently on the coordinating committee of The Media Consortium, a nonprofit consortium of nonpartisan, independent media outlets. Prior to his current job, Totten spent much of his career working in the Vermont news media, including stints at the Barton Chronicle, Vermont Times, Burlington Free Press, Vermont Guardian (which he founded), The Independent, Vermont Public Television and Seven Days. He grew up in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, and currently lives in Burlington. |
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In the social, cultural and political tumult of the '70s, the Videofreex served as the alternate TV channel for the counter culture. Recording on the newly-introduced medium of consumer video and with a core of 10+ productive videomakers, their seminal work presaged Saturday Night Live, music videos, mockumentaries, reality TV, Michael Moore, Democracy Now, YouTube, phone cameras, open platforms, and crowd sourcing. Formed at the Woodstock Festival and launched with an ultimately rejected CBS network pilot, the Videofreex were prolific producers of videotapes, screenings, workshops, art installations, performances and multi media events. The videotapes played first in underground screenings in their Soho NYC loft cum TV studio, and later were broadcast from their pirate TV station in upstate New York, in addition to more widespread educational, media center, public TV and cable TV exposure. |
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Robbie Gordon pioneered deep cover investigative reporting for ABC News/ Primetime Live in 1989, when she and her cameraman posed as mentally ill patients and lived inside a board-and-care home in Houston, Texas, capturing the abuse and neglect of residents there. She has also produced stories for ABC’s 20/20, Nightline and Good Morning America, and is currently producing for NBC’s Dateline. She has been a journalist for 38 years. Over her career Gordon has won more than 90 awards -- among them, the George Foster Peabody Award, the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and the George Polk Award. She currently teaches electronic journalism and investigative reporting at Flagler College. |
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Cathy Resmer is an associate publisher at Seven Days, Vermont's independent weekly. During her 12-year tenure at the locally owned media company, she's been a staff writer, online editor, assistant to the publisher and now manages the company's multimedia staff. Resmer also coordinates the annual Vermont Tech Jam and is copublisher and executive editor of Kids VT, Seven Days' free monthly parenting publication. Prior to joining Seven Days, she worked as an assistant to cartoonist Alison Bechdel. Resmer and her partner live with their two children in Winooski. |
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Joseph Gainza, long-time VT resident, was former director of the VT Coalition of Handicapped, the VT Program Coordinator for American Friends Service Committee (1995-2009), initiated the organization of the VT Foodbank, Community Organizer for CVCAC, an anti-poverty organization, created VT Action for Peace in 2009, and has hosted a show on WGDR for years called "Gathering Peace", which shares good news, through discussion, from local, regional, national and global struggles. |
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Joel Saxe, Ph.D. is a media educator, activist, and media producer. He teachs in the Department of Communication at UMass-Amherst and has done projects with learners around student debt, welfare and income inequality. As an educator-artist-in-residence, he has developed curriculum and taught media literacy in Massachusetts youth detention facilities. From a long-term project documenting Yiddish culture and Jewish radicalism in New York and Miami Beach, Saxe has produced a series of documentaries and installation media. Saxe co-produces the Bread & Roses Show on Valley Free Radio (WXOJ, 103.3FM), a weekly show exploring issues related to creating a fair economy and social justice. |
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Traven Leyshon is a Member Vermont Workers Center media committee, Secretary-Treasurer Vermont AFL-CIO, online communications organizer for Vermont AFL-CIO, host weekly talk radio program on WDEV, former radio host at WGDR, host monthly Workers Center cable access program. |
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John Murphy is a 40-year radio veteran and community media activist. A continuing focus for his work has been on radio station management, consulting and networking as well as increasing public access to technology in service to human and community development. John is a Goddard College alumnus - with a BA in media studies and community development and MA from the Socially Responsible Business and Sustainable Communities (SBC) Program. John currently serves as Adjunct Faculty in the Communications Department at Eastern Connecticut State University and is Owner/President of Human Arts Media, a community media consulting and production company. |
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8:00 AM - 9:00 AM: Registration
9:00 AM - 9:10 AM: Welcome Address by President Dr. Barbara Vacarr
Goddard College President Dr. Barbara Vacarr delivers the opening remarks and the 2013 Alternative Media Conference officially begins.
Location: Haybarn Theatre
9:10 AM - 9:20 AM: A Brief History of the Alternative Media Conference- Larry Yurdin
Larry Yurdin (BA RUP ’67), Organizer of the 1970 Alternative Media Conference will speak about the original conference.
Location: Haybarn Theatre
9:20 AM - 10:05 AM: The Other Voice in the Room: Why I’ve Dedicated My Life to Alternative Media - Thom Hartmann
Presenter: Thom Hartmann – Progressive Radio & TV Host
Description: Thom Hartmann speaks on his life in alternative media and why it is critical that we maintain myriad voices in public discourse. How corporate control can threaten our speech, and what we all must do to respond.
Location: Haybarn Theatre
10:05 AM- 10:45 AM: The Alternative Media: Service, Engagement and Impact - Maxie Jackson
Presenter: Maxie Jackson – Former President & CEO for National Federation of Independent Broadcasters
Description: Radio remains one of the most relevant sources of news whether it is NPR or Pacifica. Join Maxie Jackson as he speaks on how critical independent radio is to free discourse and democracy, how it is changing for the better and how we can keep it free and informative.
Location: Haybarn Theatre
10:45 AM: Break
10:55 AM - 11:40 AM: Print is Still Alive and It Is Pissed - Andi Zeisler
Presenter: Andi Zeisler, the cofounder and editorial/creative director of Bitch Magazine
Description:Feminism and print have a lot in common: Specifically, both have been declared dead more times than it's possible to count. In fact, both are still alive and kicking; it's simply that both feminism and print media have a current presence and narrative that look little like the incarnations of the past.
As the cofounder of Bitch Media, a nonprofit best known for publishing the magazine Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, Andi will discuss the significance of print media today—what it looks like, why it matters, and what we get from print that we don't get anywhere else—and talk about Bitch's history at the intersection of two contested realms.
Location: Haybarn Theatre
11:45 AM: Lunch
1:30 PM - 2:45 PM Afternoon Session 1 [Choose One of the Following]
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Panel: Why Fake News is Better Than Real News - Community Center, Media Room
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More and more people get their news from "fake news" such the Daily Show, the Colbert Report and the Onion Newspaper. With satire comes many issues: fair use, creating confusion and the potential pitfalls of dumbing down the masses. Why must the news now be both informative and entertaining? The panel features three former writers for the Onion and now writers for AdultSwim.com as they talk about how fake news can help illuminate issues of our time in an engaging and interesting way - and also talk about some of the pitfalls that they have dealt with while "making up the news."
- Panelists: Sascha Stanton-Craven, Daniel Mirk, John Harris
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More and more people get their news from "fake news" such the Daily Show, the Colbert Report and the Onion Newspaper. With satire comes many issues: fair use, creating confusion and the potential pitfalls of dumbing down the masses. Why must the news now be both informative and entertaining? The panel features three former writers for the Onion and now writers for AdultSwim.com as they talk about how fake news can help illuminate issues of our time in an engaging and interesting way - and also talk about some of the pitfalls that they have dealt with while "making up the news."
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Panel: Free Information: Who is Paying the Price? - Haybarn Theatre
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More and more people expect to get their news for free. Join content creators and policy experts for a short navigation of the issues and balance that we need to both deliver on a collective mission of fostering collaboration, dialogue, media and democracy while also ensuring the continued existence of the very institutions that bring that mission to life.
- Panelists: Anne Galloway, Cathy Resmer, Todd O'Boyle
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More and more people expect to get their news for free. Join content creators and policy experts for a short navigation of the issues and balance that we need to both deliver on a collective mission of fostering collaboration, dialogue, media and democracy while also ensuring the continued existence of the very institutions that bring that mission to life.
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Panel: Communicating Equality: Low-Wage Workers and Alternative Media - Clockhouse
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The focus of this panel will be the use of alternative media in educating and organizing for economic justice, particularly with regard to the low wage and service workers who represent a huge proportion of the existing labor force and an alarmingly high percentage of jobs being added to the economy.
- Panelists: Joseph Gainza, Joel Saxe, Traven Leyshon
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The focus of this panel will be the use of alternative media in educating and organizing for economic justice, particularly with regard to the low wage and service workers who represent a huge proportion of the existing labor force and an alarmingly high percentage of jobs being added to the economy.
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Workshop: Practical Applications and Ethics of Investigative Reporting - Oak Room
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Robbie Gordon has been at the pinnacle of investigative journalism for several decades. In this workshop she will offer an interactive seminar on the practical applications and ethics of investigative reporting. She will draw on her background in both mainstream and alternative media and speak about the lessons learned and challenges overcome in the course of her career. The workshop will cover the process, procedure, policy, and law of storytelling in an informative and responsible manner.
- Facilitator: Robbie Gordon
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Robbie Gordon has been at the pinnacle of investigative journalism for several decades. In this workshop she will offer an interactive seminar on the practical applications and ethics of investigative reporting. She will draw on her background in both mainstream and alternative media and speak about the lessons learned and challenges overcome in the course of her career. The workshop will cover the process, procedure, policy, and law of storytelling in an informative and responsible manner.
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM: Afternoon Session 2 [Choose One of the Following]
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Panel: Community, Activism & Alternative Media - Clockhouse
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Alternative Media has the incredible power to reach out to small communities and move them to action. Join three committed activists and professionals as they talk about the transformative power of community radio, citizen journalism, social media and how critical these tools are to community development and how they can continue to shape community in positive ways.
- Panelists: Shay Totten, John Murphy, Carmelo Ruiz, Maxie Jackson
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Alternative Media has the incredible power to reach out to small communities and move them to action. Join three committed activists and professionals as they talk about the transformative power of community radio, citizen journalism, social media and how critical these tools are to community development and how they can continue to shape community in positive ways.
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Panel: Videofreex Pirate TV Show (21st Century Re-edit) Screening and Panel -Haybarn Theatre
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The Videofreex attended the first Alternative Media Conference in 1970 and return to screen their film and discuss the history and future of alternative media. The film evokes the 1970s with a fast-paced variety show of 40 documentary, experimental and performance shorts and excerpts from 1,200
videotapes in the Videofreex archive.
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The Videofreex attended the first Alternative Media Conference in 1970 and return to screen their film and discuss the history and future of alternative media. The film evokes the 1970s with a fast-paced variety show of 40 documentary, experimental and performance shorts and excerpts from 1,200
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Workshop: Digital Storytelling as Art and Activism - Community Center, Media Room
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Storytelling enriches "the mysterious development of [our] souls." Stories help us learn, instruct, make sense of our lives and our world, and advocate. With recent innovations in radio aesthetics, editing technologies, and the Internet, digital storytelling has taken off as a form of art and activism. In this workshop, we'll review a range of digital storytelling forms (audio as well as image + sound) and emerging infrastructures for distributing stories through radio, podcasts, and Internet platforms. We'll review how people have been using digital stories to support work in sustainability, public health, and other forms of personal and social repair. Finally, we will plunge into story-making, generating collaborative pieces about alternative media for the Internet platform, Cowbird.
- Facilitator: Karen Werner
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Storytelling enriches "the mysterious development of [our] souls." Stories help us learn, instruct, make sense of our lives and our world, and advocate. With recent innovations in radio aesthetics, editing technologies, and the Internet, digital storytelling has taken off as a form of art and activism. In this workshop, we'll review a range of digital storytelling forms (audio as well as image + sound) and emerging infrastructures for distributing stories through radio, podcasts, and Internet platforms. We'll review how people have been using digital stories to support work in sustainability, public health, and other forms of personal and social repair. Finally, we will plunge into story-making, generating collaborative pieces about alternative media for the Internet platform, Cowbird.
4:30 PM: Break
4:45 PM - 5:30 PM: The Last Word - Ellen Ratner
5:40 PM - 6:30 PM: Bar Opens
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM: Dinner
8:00 PM: The Combustible Caberet / Digital Vaudeville
WGDR's 40th Anniversary kicks off at 3 P.M. when The Thom Hartmann Program airs live from WGDR studios with special guest Senator Bernie Sanders. Legends of WGDR follows, featuring interviews with radio personalities from WGDR's past including Calvos and Damien, George Thomas and others.
There will be pop-up performances and interactive sculpture garden throughout the conference.
Price of conference admission includes the evening's entertainment:
THE COMBUSTIBLE CABARET/DIGITAL VAUDEVILLE
Interweaving old-world street performance styles of kamishibai, cantastoria, and puppet shows with the future in multi-media, video projection, and hip-hop linguistics. All original works in quick succession. Hosted by Morgan Andrews. Curated by Ben t. Matchstick.
Doors open at 7:30
Performance begins at 8pm at the Haybarn Theater
Tickets for nonattendees are $10 at the door
ARTIST BIOS
Ben t. Matchstick
Ben is an assemblist - performer, builder, and event creator. He is the founder of the Cardboard Teck Instantute of Montpelier, Vermont. More can be found about him at bentmatchstick.com and soon on YouTube.
Morgan FitzPatrick Andrews (Master of Ceremonies) was a noisemaker, radio jockey, wood cutter, poster artist and puppeteer before earning a degree in performance studies from Goddard College in 2009. He's toured shows around three continents and curated over 100 events for Puppet Uprising in Philadelphia as well as festivals in Pittsburgh, North Carolina and Brazil. Somewhere in there he got some art and writing published in several books and began working in the Theatre of the Oppressed with guidance from Brazilian director Augusto Boal and India's Jana Sanskriti movement. Morgan lives in Philadelphia where he leads theatre workshops, teaches yoga, and is frequently called upon to don a mustache and MC various events. He founded the Medium Theatre Company in 2011, a not-too-big, not-too-small groups of actors, dancers and musicians who create devised work in historic spaces and play with the definition of "medium" in all of its different forms.
Trish Denton
From scat singing to street dancing to embodying inanimate objects, her passion lies in the ritual of play. A recent graduate from Goddard College with her piece The Homing Device, she now keeps busy directing puppet operas, fortune-telling, nuturing community and sending mail art with no return address. She is a choreographer for the Very Merry Theater. Her original production of Orkestriska's Box enjoyed a successful run at Burlington's Main Street Landing Theater.
Cathleen Carr
Cathleen Carr is an actress, improviser, writer, producer, and Goddard alum living in New York City. She was recently named a semi-finalist in the NYTVF Lifetime Pipeline Competition for her original unscripted series Career Hunters, which Cathleen co-wrote and co-stars in with Daiva Deupree, her longtime comedy collaborator. Their show, Two Girls For Five Bucks has been seen all over the country and enjoyed successful runs at both Upright Citizens Brigade and Ars Nova in New York City. http://www.cathleencarr.com/
Taina Asili
Taína Asili's music is an energetic fusion of Afro-Latin, reggae, and rock sounds. Her voice exudes strength of Spirit, filling listeners with the fervor of freedom and inspiring audiences to dance to the movement of rebellion. Taina's art reflects her activism, working in political prisoner liberation, prisoner rights, environmental justice, and holistic health movements for over a decade. http://www.tainaasili.com/
Gaetano Vaccaro
Gaetano Vaccaro Gaetano Vaccaro is first generation Sicilian, raised in Albany, NY. Influenced by the Sicilian guitar playing of his father and grandfather, Gaetano began studying various musical instruments in his early childhood. Gaetano is now skilled in numerous genres from rock to jazz to flamenco. He has studied under well-known jazz guitarists John Hilton and Pat Martino, and flamenco guitarist Miguel Angel Cortez. In addition to his duet work with Taína Asili and his work with La Banda Rebelde, Gaetano performed across the country numerous times and put out two albums with hip hop/rock band Broadcast Live. In addition to music, Gaetano is a media arts teacher, working as a resident artist at Albany High School and summer instructor for Youth FX.
Mark Read
Mark Read is an artist and educator based in Brooklyn NY. His films have appeared in numerous festivals, including Tribeca, Human Rights Watch, Rooftop Films, and the 2006 Whitney Biennial. Read has also worked on a variety of interventionist art projects over the last 15 years, and is best known for a series of projections on the Verizon building on November 17th, 2011 that came to be known as the "Occupy Bat Signal."
Clare Dolan
Clare is a is a painter, director, and performer of Cantastoria, Toy Theater, Outdoor Puppetry, and Stilt Dancing, while simultaneously living a secret double life as a nurse in her small Vermont town. She's a veteran of the Bread and Puppet Theater, and founder of The Museum of Everyday Life www.museumofeverydaylife.org.
M. Tree Sampson & Derek Smith Present:
Atlas Joint is a multimedia collaboration between Derek Smith, and M. Tree Sampson. Using only their iPhones, cardboard, and an amplifier, Atlas Joint creates a musical universe in which masked M.C.s, rapping puppets, invented languages, and kinetic sculpture, all take place within an ever hanging atmosphere of original hip-hop compositions.
Erok Anonymous:
Erok can be linked to numerous grand, criminal and/or petty art episodes ranging far and wide from popular education puppetry with Phantom Theory Theater, to radical garbage re-productions with The Cardboard Tech Instantute; from street theater and contastoria with the Flying Rutabega Cycle Circus and Review to radical banner-posters-flyer making, guerilla mural painting and poetry distribution.
Benjamin Aleshire:
Benjamin is an artist based in Burlington. His poetry has appeared in Barrow Street, Burlington Free Press, Crab Orchard Review, Seven Days and many others. A recipient of a VT Arts Council grant in publishing, Aleshire edits Honeybee Press, which uses letter-pressing, block-printing, and other forms of alternative printing. Recently he was in residence at the BCA Center, a finalist for the Neil Shepard Poetry Prize, and selected for the Young Artist Series at St. Lawrence University. Dropped Apples is his first book of poems. Aleshire also tours internationally with the ol' time band, Vermont Joy Parade. Currently he is artist in residence at the New City Galerie on Church Street in Burlington.
Directions
From Interstate 89: Take exit 7, merging onto Rte. 62 East. Remain on Rte. 62 for about 1 mile and bear right onto the ramp toward Rte. 302 West / Rte. 2 / Montpelier. Take the first left onto the Barre Montpelier Road / Rte. 302 and continue until you enter the roundabout (circle). Take the 1st right off the roundabout onto Rte. 2 East toward East Montpelier / Plainfield. After traveling through East Montpelier, continue for about 3 miles and turn left on Rte. 214 at the Goddard College sign, just before entering Plainfield. The entrance to Goddard’s main campus is the first road on your left. (If you use Interstate 89 Exit 8, follow the directions from the North below.)
From the East: Rte. 2 is a rural two-lane highway and can be followed west from as far away as Bangor, Maine. After entering Vermont on Rte. 2 you will travel through St. Johnsbury (approx. 30 miles from the New Hampshire border) and Marshfield (approx. 18 more miles) before entering Plainfield, where you should look for the Plainfield General Store on your right. Turn right at the next intersection on Rte 214 North. The entrance to Goddard’s main campus is the first road on your left.
Lodging and Accommodations:
The Comstock House Bed and Breakfast, small, elegant B&B, 2 miles from the Goddard campus. Comstock is a sponsor of the Alternative Media Conference.
Marshfield Inn and Motel, small, rustic motel/inn just 3 miles from the Goddard campus.
Hollister Hill Farm Bed and Breakfast, enjoy a farm experience at this B&B only 1 ½ miles from campus.
Pie-in-the-Sky Farm Bed and Breakfast, country setting for this rustic B&B about 5 miles from campus.
Capitol Plaza Hotel, larger city type hotel with restaurant in downtown Montpelier, about 10 miles from campus.
The Inn at Montpelier, elegant inn in downtown Montpelier, about 10 miles from Goddard’s campus.
Betsy's Bed and Breakfast, quiet B&B in a residential neighborhood of Montpelier, 10 miles from campus.
Comfort Inn and Suites, closest motel to Interstate 89, in Berlin, about 12 miles from Goddard’s campus.
Registration for the conference includes a boxed lunch and admission to the evening performance, "Combustible Cabaret and Digital Vaudeville.
At our registration page, you may also sign up for on-campus housing during the evening of May 18.
Click here to register for the conference and or sign up for housing
The Alternative Media Conference is made possible through an anonymous contribution in honor of Thom and Louise Hartmann, and the Comstock House