The 5 Best Things That Happened to Tumble Media This Year
Wow, we can’t believe it’s almost the end of the year! Said everyone who’s ever written an end-of-the-year list. But for real, this year has been a big one for Tumble Media. We have hit milestones that we barely dared to dream about when we started the company back in 2016.
Here’s a few of the highlights from our 2022:
Sara Robberson Lentz joins Tumble full-time, as COO
When our co-founder Sara was able to come on board full-time in February, we achieved the original goal of our company. We wanted to be sustainable, for the three of us to work together and build a unique vision for a children’s educational audio company. Sara had somehow been doing double duty for years, managing all our projects while working a full time job. Since Sara has been able to devote more energy to Tumble, we’ve been full steam ahead.
Elliot the Intern becomes Elliot the Production Assistant
Elliot came into our lives as part of our summer internship program, and quickly showed himself to handle any audio or website task we could throw at him. How to describe Elliot? Well, he’s a student at U-Mass Amherst, loves literature and education, makes good jokes, and a pleasure to work with. You can hear Elliot hosting our Patreon bonus episode series, and he also plays a vital role producing roughcuts for Tumble and managing our social media accounts. We’re excited to be building our team!
A Return to Live Events
After years of COVID and years of living abroad, we were finally able to return to live shows! First stop was the Family Music and Book Meltdown, an event that highlights the wealth of “kindie” musicians and children’s book authors in our new home of the Pioneer Valley, Massachusetts. We also got to debut our song, “Sometimes Butt” and our band, Marshall and the Sometimes Butts. A season kickoff event at a local bookstore, and “Life Lab Live” at the Cambridge Science Festival, quickly followed. We have more live show plans in the works for 2023!
The Life Lab Series
We started our 8th season with the most ambitious editorial project we’ve ever taken on: A five part mini-series about synthetic biology. With support from the Engineering Biology Research Consortium and the National Science Foundation, we were able to dig deep into the development of science and technology that will shape our future — and ask hard questions about how we make decisions on how to use it. We’re incorporating all we learned about empowering engagement in societal issues, into the rest of the series.
Receiving a National Science Foundation research grant
This was definitely our biggest news of the year! Together with our incredible partners from AUI, Oregon State University, and Independence Science, we were awarded a $1 million grant to study STEM podcasts as a tool to engage blind and sighted students in science. This is among the first research into listening and making podcasts in school settings. Our team met in-person at the Texas School for the Blind in October, and we’re off to a great start! Expect to hear episodes from this project beginning in spring 2023.
What underlies these big milestones is the support of our listeners, and our personal network of fellow podcasters, educators, scientists, business advisors, and family and friends who have believed in us over the years. We believe deeply in our mission of creating high-quality, educational audio for children, and this support has gotten us where we are. When Tumble received the Common Sense Seal for “the potential to spark family conversations, entertain families of all kinds, and have a positive, lasting effect on society,” it’s affirmation that we’re on the right track.
We have plans to build on all of this success for 2023. Our first goal? Relocating the Tumble HQ to Greenfield, Massachusetts — where Lindsay and Marshall currently live, and where Sara plans to move in the first half of the year! So watch this space for more news to come.
