CBAA's NFDS 2021 winner shortlisted for 2022 New York Radio Festival Award

The documentary, Rideability, winner of CBAA's 2021 National Features and Documentary Series (NFDS), has been shortlisted for the 2022 New York Festivals Radio Award in the category of Community Service. Winners will be announced at the Storytellers Gala virtual ceremony on April 26 2022.

The documentary looks at horses and their ability to connect with vulnerable people. Producer Melane Robinson from Vision Australia Radio found that they play a huge role in the success of animal assisted therapies here in Australia. Katharina Loesche supervised production and Melanie received training from the Community Media Training Organisation. 

Melaine said, "Apart from being completely blown away by this, I am also incredibly humbled and grateful to the CBAA for putting my work out there in this way. I think that it is just so wonderful that my little story has potentially reached so far across the world! I am also incredibly grateful to the CMTO and the fantastic NFDS programme and also to my mentor producer, Katherina Loecher, and my support worker, Zoe Duncan, without these incredible people there is no way that this would ever have happened.

"I completely fell into audio journalism quite out of nowhere less than two years ago not having a clue about any of this, so it just goes to show that we great training solid mentorship and strong supports anything can happen."

Producers from eight community radio stations were chosen to participate in the 2021 NFDS based on their story idea to receive training and mentoring from the Community Media Training Organisation (CMTO). Their stories are now original features and can be played by our sector.

The series is produced for and available free for airplay on Australian community radio stations via the CBAA's Community Radio Network. Download the content for airplay.

Listeners can also discover this and previous years' series from the National Features and Documentary Series web page, through iTunes and your favourite podcast app or platform.

The CBAA National Features and Documentary Series is produced with the assistance of the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications via the Community Broadcasting foundation (CBF)