About Our Project

MISSION
Spark! is an independent media project focusing on Syracuse voices, Syracuse music and Syracuse stories. Volunteer-run and non-commercial, we support local artists, give voice to the underrepresented and strive to be a reflection of our community. We use radio, online streaming, podcasting, social media and video to promote community engagement.

SYRACUSE VOICES
The primary goal of Spark! is to enable your neighbors, co-workers, family and friends to have an expanded voice.  We do this directly with local program hosts that will be live and local as close to 24/7 as possible. But we also accomplish this indirectly by encouraging them to air interviews, performances and feedback from local community members as well. And in the rare times when we don’t have a live local programmer available, we pledge to at least keep the content locally-focused so we are always as local as we possibly can be. We aim to take passionate local people and give them a forum for their passions and the ability to share that with others locally as directly as possible.

SYRACUSE MUSIC
Another major goal is to promote the local music scene and local musicians especially.  One way we do this is our continuing commitment to air at least one local song per hour, every hour of every day, all year long.  We also want to air as much live local music programming as possible, between musicians playing in our studio to local performances around town.  Our goal also is to better promote touring artists playing in the community and even artists recording their works at local music studios. We fervently believe a lot of great music is being made and played locally that just needs better promotion and exposure. And when we’re not playing music with a direct local connection, we want to be airing great music that should be heard locally, but lacks any meaningful outlets currently. Our goal is for you to constantly hear local musicians that also happen to be your neighbors, co-workers, family and friends on the radio and online, sharing their love of music with the larger community.

SYRACUSE STORIES
Lastly, we enable your neighbors, co-workers, family and friends to tell their personal stories and to discuss local community news and issues that matter most to them.  We do this directly with program hosts that will report on local issues, host discussions, and help others participate in other ways in their live and local programming. But we also accomplish this indirectly by encouraging them to air interviews, performances and feedback from local voices as well.  We also want to create an all-volunteer news team that can produce at least a half hour of local news per week day, but that will require a lot of people willing to take that journey with us.  Our aim is to take passionate local people and give them a forum for their passions and the ability to share that with others locally as directly as possible, with as much additional opportunities for local input as we can manage.

Because this is an all-volunteer effort,  our abilities are directly proportional to the amount of participation we can attract. That’s why we strongly encourage you to apply to do a show online at www.sparksyracuse.org/proposals/ if this interests you or if someone you know locally might have something significant to contribute to this project.

Help us get local voices, local music and local stories on the air in our community!