The finished radio pieces from the Texas Folklife Stories Summer Institute, a weeklong intensive audio production workshop for Austin-area teachers, nonprofit professionals, and community members. Connie Jo Kirk was interviewed by Institute participants Elizabeth, Ezra, and Taylor. The background music was recorded by Texas Folklife at the Skylark Lounge on June 12, 2019 Connie Kirk singing with the Paul Klemperer Band.

Texas Folklife's 2019 “Stories from Deep in the Heart" Summer Institute is a week-long intensive workshop in audio documentary production with professional producers, journalists and cultural workers. Participants create a short audio documentary on themes related to folklife; this year's theme was "Women in the Austin Music Scene." The “Stories from Deep in the Heart” summer institute is part of an on-going series of workshops for teachers, nonprofit professionals, and community members in the Austin area and Central Texas schools.

Folklorist Dr. Rachel González-Martin joined the Institute for the first time this year. Rachel is a Folklorist and an Assistant Professor of Latino Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a PhD in Folklore & Ethnomusicology from Indiana University. She is interested in the politics of storytelling from the vantage point of race, class, and gender identification—focusing primarily on women of color feminisms and youth culture. She is interested in how women and femme communities narrate personal experiences through the body, and through body modifications. She has recently completed her book, Quinceañera Style: Social Belonging and Latinx Consumer Identities due out in the fall of 2019 with UT press. She also co-edited the book Race and Cultural Practice in Popular Culture (Rutgers UP) with fellow folklorist, Domino R. Perez.

More information about the Stories Summer Institute: 
texasfolklife.org/ssi2019

“Stories from Deep in the Heart” is supported in part through grants from the Texas Commission on the Arts and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which believes that a great nation deserves great art; the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and Department of Telecommunications & Regulatory Affairs Grant for Technology Opportunities (GTOPS); and generous support from the Austin Independent School District, KUT News 90.5, and the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT Austin.