Virtual Vox Pops

When faced with a crisis on the scale of a pandemic, how can the intrepid ethnographers at the Vermont Folklife Center reach out to our fellow Vermonters and document their everyday experiences when: 1) We need to stay at least 6 feet away from each other and 2) we can’t even leave our own homes? Virtual Vox Pops, that’s how. 

Vox Pop stands for Vox populi—“voice of the people.” In broadcasting, vox pop refers to person-on-the-street style interviews where many different people respond to a single, simple interview question. 

So what’s a Virtual Vox Pop? To connect with people around the state and learn about their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re picking up the phone to conduct short vox pop interviews with fellow Vermonters: our friends and neighbors, or potentially even you! 

With your permission, we’ll record the phone calls and add them to the Listening in Place Sound Archive to become an enduring record of our experiences at this unprecedented time. Keep your phone close by, Vermonters, because you might be getting a Virtual Vox Pop call from the Vermont Folklife Center sometime soon!

If you’d like for us to give you a call so that you can join other ‘voices of the people’, fill out this form with your name and phone number and we’ll call you back to record your voice.