The Charlotte is Creative Podcast

Recorded immediately following Creative Mornings Charlotte on June 2, 2023, Matt and Time talk with Tony Award Winner Corey Mitchell, founder of Charlotte's Theater Gap Initiative.

Fresh from his emotional presentation at the May 5 Creative Mornings event, Quadriphonic Sound's David Jeffers joins Matt and Tim to talk about his path to sound design, just what a sound designer does, and the music that inspires him.

Lauren Widrick, fresh off her inspirational talk at the April Creative Mornings event, talks with Matt and Tim about walking away from a perfectly good job to chase a dream.

Charlotte is Creative's Matt Olin sits doen with Charlotte Poet Laureate Jay Ward, to learn more about how one becomes a Poet Laureate, and why he hid his talent for many years.

At our first CreativeMornings/Charlotte event of 2023, we met three people committed to helping others find their Sanctuary: Liliana Jaramillo (Mexico), Yeferline Gomez (Dominican Republic), and Sadaf Alemi (Afghanistan). They all work at ourBRIDGE for Kids, a local nonprofit whose mission is to foster the education, acculturation, and resilience of newly arrived and first generation children and their families. 

In this episode of the Charlotte Is Creative Podcast, Matt and Tim sit down with Liliana, Yeferline and Sadaf to learn more about their own journeys to sanctuary and the vital roles they are playing in leading others to safety and security.

Mattie Marshall is a Charlottean. Like so many in Charlotte, she wasn’t born here. But, she’s made it her home. 

While she’s lived in several neighborhoods since moving here, it’s the historic Washington Heights community - one of Charlotte’s original Black suburbs, named after Booker T. Washington. For more than 30 years, Ms. Marshall has been the president of the Historic Washington Heights Neighborhood Association. 

As she says, she may have come for the tree-lined streets, but she stayed for the history of the community. She remained to walk in the steps of its founders, the Civil Rights leaders who lived here before her and the neighbors past and present who sit on their front porch swings welcoming all. She stayed because  Washington Heights is a home whose legacy and future are worth protecting.

In this episode of “The World Should Know …” a special podcast series developed by Charlotte Is Creative in partnership with Tom Hanchett and Winston Robinson and sponsored by the North Carolina Humanities Council - Tim Miner interviews Ms. Mattie Marshall.

Enjoy the conversation. Remember the story. Share it with someone else.

Tommie Robinson is an artist. He’s been among our most celebrated in Charlotte, NC for some time. But it wasn’t always that way. As a black man who wanted to paint for a living in post-World War II South, there wasn’t a road map for him. But, he had talent. He had passion. And – as he says – he had a hard head. So he succeeded and still paints today.

Welcome to this episode of “The World Should Know …” a special podcast series developed by Charlotte Is Creative in partnership with Tom Hanchett and Winston Robinson and sponsored by the North Carolina Humanities Council.

Hear an incredible conversation between community organizer Winston Robinson and his father, artist Tommie Robinson, the first Black member of the Charlotte Art Guild. The two discuss what it has been like to build a career as a Black artist in the Queen City then and now … and why art is a vital part of our community.

Enjoy the conversation. Remember the story. Share it with someone else.

Rudean Harris didn’t learn how to smile until she was a teenager. 

After the death of Rudean’s mother, her father moved she and her siblings to Charlotte where, her extended family could help raise them. Fighting through poverty and bigotry, the family stayed together, but there was little to smile about.

But, through the kindness of those in her community, Ms. Harris learned to smile. She opened a restaurant in her mid-teens. And, for 60 years, she opened her doors, her heart and – often – her kitchen to show love to those who walked in the doors of “Rudean’s” morning, noon and late night. 

This is the first episode of “The World Should Know …” a special podcast series developed by Charlotte Is Creative in partnership with Tom Hanchett and Winston Robinson and sponsored by the North Carolina Humanities Council.

This series was created to help keep stories of Charlotte’s past alive, stories of neighborhoods and neighbors that have been foundational to our past, but are in danger of being lost to time in our future. 

Enjoy the conversation. Remember the story. Share it with someone else.

Ricky Singh is an educator, artist and father of four, so he knows what it takes to help build individuals and communities. He put much of that knowledge and passion to work this summer after the Black Lives Matter protests, painting several murals on and around Beatties Ford Road. 

On today's Who Built Me segment, producer Andy Goh talks to Ricky about about the people he credits for building him: his four boys. Despite a difference in almost 12 years between the oldest and youngest, Ricky says they share many similarities. Ricky speaks about what he's learned from that range of characteristics, and how he's trying to help them define their own success.