About Next Door Neighbors

Nashville Public Television’s Emmy ® Award winning Next Door Neighbors series looks at Nashville’s status as a new destination city for refugees and immigrants, and explores the rich diversity of people now calling Nashville home. Across the United States, mid-sized cities like Nashville, TN are experiencing unprecedented growth in their international populations. Together these communities are redefining the traditional international city on a smaller local scale. As our new neighbors rebuild their lives in Nashville, their experiences, contributions and conflicts impact the city, but they are challenged by isolation and barriers unknown to many Nashvillians. How Nashville addresses its changing demographic will be important for the future of similar communities across the country.

Through a series documentaries, extensive outreach and continued relationships with Nashville’s immigrant and refugee communities the Next Door Neighbors project aims to increase understanding of unfamiliar cultures, highlight the experiences and successes of Nashville’s immigrants, and mediate a community-wide conversation about who we are as Nashvillians. At it's core, Next Door Neighbors shares first person stories from the perspectives of Nashville's diverse immigrant and refugee communities.

Beginning in 2010, through support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Next Door Neighbors Storyteller project expanded the mission of Next Door Neighbors by equipping, training, and empowering local immigrants to tell their own stories. Videos submitted by the Storytellers find a global audience online via YouTube and at the Storyteller Blog. In addition to the full length documentaries, the Next Door Neighbors Shorts extend coverage of Nashville’s diverse communities online and on air on Nashville Public Television.  With over 140 languages spoken in Metro Nashville Public Schools as of 2013, Nashville continues to grow as a destination city.

The Next Door Neighbors Storytellers project received the 2012 National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) award for Best Nontraditional Community Engagement. NPT’s Next Door Neighbors series received the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s 2009 My Source Community Impact Award for Engagement.

Little Kurdistan, USA and Somali received Regional Emmy ® Awards for Best Historical / Cultural Program, in 2008 and 2009. 

About Nashville Public Television

Nashville Public Television, Nashville’s PBS station, is available free and over-the-air to nearly 2.4 million people throughout the Middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky viewing area. NPT’s three broadcast channels are NPT, the main channel; secondary channel NPT2; and NPT3, a 24/7 PBS Kids channel. NPT is also available to anyone in the world through its array of NPT digital services, including wnpt.org, YouTube channels and the PBS video app. NPT provides, through the power of traditional television and interactive digital communications, quality educational, cultural and civic experiences that address issues and concerns of the people of the Nashville region, and which thereby help improve the lives of those we serve.

WNPT, Nashville's independent nonprofit PBS station, is operated by licensee Nashville Public Television, Inc.