OTV Sabbatical Reflections | Chris Walker - Head of Marketing & Exhibition
At the first dinner party L to R - Yvette, Forrest, and Ari.
How did you spend your sabbatical?
During our sabbatical I chose to dig into my audio practice. In the summer of 2022 I was selected to take part in the return of Vocalo’s Summer Storytelling Workshop series. Over eight weeks, my cohort of ten met twice weekly to learn audio production and edit, produce, and host our own audio piece. I have furthered this work by creating my own podcast series involving a series of dinner parties in which I invited a revolving group of friends over and cook meals from recipes created by Black chefs, then have discussions about their personal histories with cooking and food. Over the break I hosted my first two parties.
Lessons Learned:
How did you spend your OTV Sabbatical Stipend?
My Aunt Pat her daughter Tricia in the 1970s.
I spent my Sabbatical Stipend on groceries, a subscription to Descript which is an audio transcription service, and on travel to visit my bio family for Christmas on the east coast. While there, one of my stops was a visit with my 80-year-old Great Aunt Pat, our matriarch of the family and excellent storyteller. I was grateful to record some of our conversation. I also got to see my cousins, some of which I haven’t seen in over 8 years, and absolutely destroy them in a game of Uno.
With my cousins on Christmas, L to R, Sherelle, Karaan, and Ezra.
Why did you choose to invest in this activity/effort?
Although I have a deep love for film, as long as I’ve been at OTV, I’ve never identified as a filmmaker. Audio is my first love, I’ve been a musician for over two decades. It’s the first way I ever described myself. Audio production combines my love of storytelling with a medium I’ve always been enamored with and have a knack for. Investing in it with time and money feels like a promise to myself to continue to pursue something that brings me a lot of joy and alignment.
What did you learn?
When you create a set of rules and guidelines for your own project, you can bend them, no one knows them but you! My original goal was to have 6 people at each dinner and do them every other week... Girl. Eventually, I realized that simply choosing the groups of people was becoming overwhelming (libra problems) and that’s before I got anywhere near shopping, cooking, or interviewing folks. Not worth it.
The more tape you have, the more you have to sift through and edit. Initially I thought the more the better and ended up with over six hours of tape from my first dinner. This was so much tape that the software I use couldn’t even properly process and transcribe it.
If you’re having people over, or really ever, always always always read the recipe thoroughly at least a day before you begin. Sis, if there’s dough involved, it probably needs to rise. Take the time you think you’re going to need and add two hours. Take the original thought of when you think you want people to come over and then tack on an hour. You think people can start arriving by 6? Say 7.
Go grocery shopping the day before a dinner party. Trust me.