Happy New Year

As the year closes, I'm sifting through some favorite memories from 2012. At the start of the year, we relaunched the new television studio and began training community programmers again. By spring, we were ramping up for a busy election season on the local front, and attending and tabling at many community events. Summer found us ushering dozens of kids through Kid Vid and Animaniacs camps, teaching them valuable technical skills, as well how to have fun with them. We also completed work for a grant project blending consumer advocacy and consumer media issues, including a video contest for kids in 4-12 grades, complete with fabulous prizes.

The fall brought a new crop of high school and community interns, and many community events to cover, as well as another important election. Late fall-into-winter found us playing host to 20 students from UC Davis' Program in Technocultural Studies, as they used the media center for training in live radio and radio theater production.

Throughout the year, we trained community members, supported their ongoing productions, and recorded many community events, including: the Yolo Solano Economic Summit; So You Think You Can Dance benefit for Davis High School Jazz Choir; Davis International House Festival; portions of the Cool Davis Festival; United States Bicycle Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony; MLK Day for City of Davis at Varsity Theatre; Davis High Idol benefit for Advanced Treble Choir; Parent University presentations; Davis Children’s Choir; SFJazz High School All-Stars at The Mondavi; City of Davis Cesar Chavez Celebration; the Yolo Food Connect Summit; and many more.

Through it all, KDRT's programmers and volunteers brought live public affairs and music programming to the local airwaves (and beyond). KDRT's outreach expanded to encompass partnerships with The Davis Dirt, the Davis Music Festival and Davis Live Music Collective and, of course, The Davis Odd Fellows and their monthly First Thursday Live! concert series.

It was our pleasure to cap the year with a Holiday Open House on Dec. 3. The elbow-to-elbow crowd highlighted both the depth and breadth of our community's engagement with community media, and digital and technological literacy, here in Yolo County. Besides that, it was fun to come together to celebrate a year well done!

Wishing you a very happy transition to 2013, and many opportunities for involvement & connection in the year to come.

In community,
Autumn Labbe-Renault
Executive Director

PS: I'm wrapping up DMA's annual report for our last fiscal year and look forward to sharing that with you in the coming weeks.