We are a small, volunteer-run arts and agricultural nonprofit in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia seeking guidance on event live-streaming technology options and developing the live-stream strategy a small folk music festival we are planning for October focused on using marginalized voices to reclaim the Murder Ballad music genre.

We are hoping to get a volunteer who can help us remotely set up and test livestreaming, as well as set up a best practices document for refernence, options prior to the event on October 12.

More info at www.midmountain.org/murderballad

This is an opportunity to help us figure out our technical infrastructure in a way that will help more people access our intersectional arts programming in the future. A little more about us: Our mission is growing a resilient creative community by sharing time and natural space to develop the art of storytelling while literally nourishing our neighbors. Our collective organized into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2023 that is currently led by a majority BIPOC board. We are working to develop inclusive professional creative development opportunities, as well as seeking community input about interpreting the property’s past—which includes ties to colonization and human bondage.

Since late 2022 we've: hosted dozens of creatives for overnight stays via workshops, fellowships and residencies; organized more than a dozen events, including an ongoing environmental art show; planted a nearly 300 tree and shrub native food forest with plans for mutual aid produce distribution; opened a "Really Free Market" sharing free goods with our neighbors in rural arts community space reclaimed post office building; and launched the Our Connected Culture podcast starting a season featuring late Southern science fiction author and activist Terry Bisson and his alternative history book Fire on the Mountain, which imagines a utopian "Nova Africa" society emerging in what is now the American South after a self-emancipating revolution sparked by a successful abolitionist raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.

We have a videographer available to handle operating the livestream in-person on the day of the event in October and access to basic equipment, but need more guidance about our set up and operations plans. We are hoping to develop a livestreaming approach we can use for future events, so this will help us share our work going forward!