Creative Capital

Nick Szuberla

In 1998, Nick Szuberla founded the media arts project Holler to the Hood to explore the social impact of moving hundreds of thousands of inner city minority offenders to distant rural prisons. He is the current director and co-founder of Thousand Kites, a national dialogue and organizing project addressing the U.S. criminal justice system and human rights. With a variety of media (live performance, radio, video and digital) and forms (including a multimedia installation and database-driven website), his projects focus on creating public space where people can tell their story in their own voice. He has worked extensively in the youth media movement throughout rural America, including in Appalachia, Mississippi Delta and south Texas. Working with young people in central Appalachian, Szuberla has also produced workshops that explore “hill-hop,” a rural hip-hop genre. He was the producer of the award-winning documentary films Up the Ridge, The Global Economy in Our Backyard and Sambusa. His work has been featured on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Definitely Not the Opera, BBC, Bob Edwards Show and NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered. Szuberla was awarded a New Generations fellowship from the Theater Communications Group.