Featured Content
Below you will find ever evolving curated collections highlighting diverse, historically relevant, and special interest content. Each collection contains audio stories of a particular subject, represented in chronological order. Explore our state and its people!
Click on "About" to find a detailed informational guide on further utilizing this site.
Mainstreet Radio
Created in 1987, Mainstreet Radio held a mission of reporting specifically from rural Minnesota to all of Minnesota. With an introductory staff of Rachel Reabe, Leif Enger, and John Biewen, the group developed both long and short form news features as part of MPR Journal and Morning Edition broadcasts. As the years progressed, Mainstreet Radio expanded both in reporter contributions and programming, with memorable work from the likes of Mark Steil and Catherine Winter, amongst others. Beginning in the 1990s, Mainstreet Radio presented a monthly two-hour special, focusing on issues outside the Twin Cities metro. The varied Mainstreet Radio programming ran into the mid-2000s.
Farming: Minnesota's agricultural landscape
Agriculture has been an integral part of Minnesota’s land and water for a thousand years. While crops have changed, the spirit of farming has remained constant. MPR Archive presents a selection of stories that reflect the diversity of what has been harvested, such as corn, soybeans, wild rice, and even tree fiber. This collection is also about the many hands that toil and water the soil…from the migrant farm worker in Red River Valley’s sugar beet fields, the Hmong immigrant planting near Homer, the Chanarambie Township farmer amidst the 1980s farm crisis, to the Ojibwe members following ancient harvesting traditions.
Award Collection
Since our beginning, the stations and programs affiliated with Minnesota Public Radio and later American Public Media, have endeavored to create quality programming for the community and audiences we serve, in keeping with our mission of public service. We have been honored that so many of the talented individuals and teams and their programs have won prestigious industry and audience awards; the MPR Archive is proud to highlight and present these winners in a way that celebrate the award recipient along with the subjects, stories, and communities that demonstrate public media's meaning and impact.
Stage Right, Stage Left
Theater arts has been at the center of the creative atmosphere within Minnesota for decades. The varied array of local venues have both fostered talent through the years and brought world-renowned individuals to present their artistic approaches to our Minnesota stages. The theater scene has also been integral in social dynamics within our communities…from social issues, race, to gender.
Black Art in the Twin Cities: Cultural Expression and Creative Connection
This collection brings together stories where theater, music, visual arts, and literature are utilized as creative tools for cultural expression and connection across Minnesota’s Black communities.
