I wanna learn a little bit more about your creative background.

Who is KP Kristen, the creative soul?

(both chuckle) - I think creative soul is on point.

I think I've just always been, you know, creative, highly curious, almost to a fault, I would say.

And so, I think I just grew up, like, loving the creative arts.

My grandparents really inspired a lot of that, taking me to theater and dance.

But I also had a very practical upbringing, and so at the time when it came down to choosing what to do for a career, you know, the voices behind me were saying, "Go do something practical, go do something, you know, that's gonna pay the bills."

And I took a, you know, a sharp turn and went into, you know, more of a science and engineering space, I studied business for a while.

I had this, like, academic unrest, I couldn't really find where I wanted to be.

- So starting from, like, oh, I'm gonna go to school to become a scientist or a doctor and an engineer, so what was that one moment that made you be like, no, this is not the craft for me?

- You know, I was so deeply immersed in music and theater especially as a young person and it really shaped who I was, but, you know, a combination of influences, being a little shy, and just not really having that desire to perform, you know, like I said, I went and did something else.

And at a point in my college career when I was kind of feeling a bit lost, I was looking for activities to do for a philanthropy organization student group that I was a part of and I came across this MySpace profile for the Albany Barn and I read all about, you know, creating this space where, you know, artists could come and live and work and take that creative energy and do good, you know, sort of out in the world and that that required support and maybe I didn't want to be one of those performing artists or visual artists, but, like, I could be the support and that was such a light bulb moment that had never been shown to me, you know, sort of as a path to take and I was all in.

You know, I sort of from that moment learned all about the organization, I signed up to do an internship, which required changing my major in college, and it just sort of really literally changed the entire course of my life.

- Oh, that's amazing.

That's kind of related to my next question I was gonna ask, why do you enjoy working within creative nonprofit?

- It definitely stretches those creative muscles, you know, really plays to my passions, but I also, you know, and getting into this work have figured out that so many people, you know, like those voices behind me telling me to get a real job and figure out how to pay the bills, you know, people really miss the point on what type of impact creatives, artists, creative thinkers, problem solvers have on our community.

And I just really believe in that because I've seen it and I love hearing the ideas of creative thinkers, of people who see an obstacle and go, nope, I will figure out how to get over that, how to get around it, how to break it down completely.

And that's just, it's not something you get in other work environments.

And so, for me, it's been as much about sharing that side of the experience as it has been, you know, standing in spaces and seeing really amazing performing and visual arts happening all around me, which is just like the cherry on the sundae.

- Right?

So I wanna go a little bit over your new role, you are the executive director at the Sanctuary for Independent Media.

Give us a little bit of background about that organization and what services do they provide for the community.

- So, you know, I just told you about my odd road into, you know, being an arts administrator, right, and it touched on engineering and science and math and music and dance all of these other things, and so finding a place like the Sanctuary for Independent Media, which started as, you know, a collective of independent media makers and activists who were looking for a space to do their own work and then built this really beautiful community around the idea of independent media being important, and it's blossomed and grown into this incredible, you know, presenting organization.

You know, then there came community gardens and permaculture projects, and from that a community science lab, and from the community science lab grew this incredible mutual aid health and wellness space.

So it's just this beautiful marriage of, like, art and science and media all tied together in this pursuit of social justice and environmental justice and the freedom to express ourselves.

And so, for a person like me, that eternally curious, creative person, it's like a playground, I could not be happier to be, you know, sort of where I am.

- And do you think, since, you know, media, they are at their roots, a media company, do you think that that comes at a strength because there's naturally that organic active listening piece to it?

- Yeah, I think that, you know, sort of journalistic root of the organization, again, it fuels that curiosity, that desire to stay up on what is currently impacting the people around you.

You know, one of the initiatives of the Sanctuary is the Hudson Mohawk Magazine, it's a one hour totally locally produced, locally focused news magazine.

It covers headlines, it covers environmental topics, it covers what's going on in our schools, our libraries, politics.

So there is this inherent collection and sharing of stories that's so woven through the media element.

And then because the media element is brought into all of our programming, everything is really about telling the story and not just the Sanctuary as an organization telling stories of a community, but about creating space for everybody to share their own stories and to talk about the things that are really important to them.

And so, it does happen on this very local level with, you know, our low powered FM station, but then that gets streamed over the internet and our reach is, you know, multi-state, multi-national.

- I was gonna say national.

- That's really cool, you know, to be a high school student or a college student or a retiree coming in to volunteer as a radio producer and knowing that your story about something that's happening in Troy or Schenectady or Albany is reaching, you know, all over the nation and potentially internationally.

- Have you seen any students or any folks who have been involved in these programs just, like, flourish within them?

Have you seen any success stories or anything personally yet?

- One of the things I'm just continuously blown away by as I'm, you know, onboarding and have been in this role for, you know, only about a month and a half now is all of the success stories, all of the people who have really leveraged internship opportunities or come in as a volunteer presenter at the Sanctuary and connected with others who supported their work and, you know, opened other connections, made other introductions, and now these folks are, you know, creating documentaries, writing books, going and pursuing advanced degrees, and going on to really work in these important fields of, you know, independent media and art because they got a start or just got the support that they were looking for and a community of encouraging people at the Sanctuary to help move that forward.

- And how dedicated do you think the Sanctuary is to supporting local not only artists, but folks who wanna be in media or science?

Like, how do they provide that support?

- There are just so many opportunities to get involved and to direct your own involvement.

And that's the thing that I think is really also very special for me, you know, as someone who doesn't fit into a traditional artist role, for example, or, you know, someone who likes to dabble in a lot of different things, you could come in and you could produce a segment for the radio on some topic that you're interested in, or cover a local event that you think is important and not getting covered, you know, other places in the media, and then maybe you come in and volunteer to film one of our live performances and do some post-production and learn editing and this development of skills that you can, you know, kind of have here and direct how that happens for you is really great.

And then maybe you wanna take a break from the technology side of things and go and get your hands dirty in the garden.

You can do that too.

- Wow, well, there's a little bit for everyone then.

Well, you heard that, folks.

Get in touch with the Media Sanctuary, befriend Kristen, an amazing creative, and thank you again for taking the time to talk to us today.

I appreciate you.

- Thanks.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me, always fun.