(Prairie Fire Theme Song).

Welcome to Prairie Fire Student Edition.

I'm your host, Sarah Edwards.

Now you can see that I'm in my comfy sweatshirt.

I'm on a comfy couch, and that's because we have made the students in Alison Davis's advanced documentary filmmaking class do all the work for this episode.

So for the past five months, we've worked with her class as they've selected short documentary ideas and then they broke it up into five teams and produced, directed, filmed, and edited those ideas.

So what you're about to see are the results of their very hard work and late hours in the editing bay.

This is Prairie Fire Student Edition.

My favorite orange krush memory is definitely my senior night game.

When you're on the court, you always try and tune out the crowd, but that was a night that it was hard to do that.

Just being in a really loud kind of obnoxious environment surrounded by students who are cheering on for the exact same thing as you for being just as crazy as you.

I think a lot of students have that drive to just be in that environment.

I waited in the line for every single game to get into the lower bowl my freshman year, so lots of emotions with this last game.

At a lot of schools, the student section and kind of the team are kind of separate entities, but I feel like here they're really mixed.

It's very special to have that close of a relationship.

I would say with the coach and with the players.

I'm a full-time student.

I have a job, I have an internship.

I'm in other RSOs, but I want to dedicate time to this team, to this organization, the Orange Crush, because I love it so much and see that they love us too.

It's really beneficial and every time Coach Underwood comes out and has his little points at us, it warms my heart and it gets me so amped for the game.

My favorite Orange Krush tradition is right before the tip off when they're doing their dance and everybody's jumping up and down.

Illinois basketball.

You can't beat that feeling right there.

Does the Orange Krush impact games?

A hundred percent.

Everybody don't stop.

The louder we are the harder it is for opposing players to communicate on the court and perform to the level that they usually perform during a game.

You'll see me jumping up and down just yelling constantly.

I like to be on the move.

I'll be running up and down the sideline and just trying to hype up everybody.

The orange res makes a huge impact.

I personally think that they're the best student section in the country.

It's a great advantage to have them sitting close to the court when other teams come in and they have all their chants and they're making as much noise as possible.

So they've definitely been a huge part of us winning some big games.

Orange.

Krush has truly been the highlight of my college career.

I've met some of my best friends in this organization.

It has allowed me to find a place on campus to be truly myself, have so much fun and I always leave with a smile on my face.

The atmosphere was electric, everyone showing off their line.

I pride for the last game, especially showing their love and support for the senior class.

It's just overall amazing and for my last game, I couldn't have asked for a better sendoff ending.

Everyone's career on a dub, there's nothing more you can ask for and even a AJ Red three, you love to see it.

That last game verse Oregon for senior night is really just an example of sort of my journey and all the hard work that I've been able to put in, not only just my four years here at Illinois, but my entire life.

When everybody was cheering my name, it gave me just excitement and it gave me confidence.

As soon as I checked into the game.

AJ Redd.

In that Oregon game when AJ was able to come into the game, it was really special for all of us watching him.

We all know the work that he's put in, starting as a team manager, then becoming a walk-on and then finally being a scholarship player.

We all wanted him to have that moment and he deserved that moment.

(Petrovich...back to Redd...could it be...).

The crowd was awesome once that happened and I was just really happy for AJ as a person as much as I was as a player.

It was just a surreal feeling for me.

And then after the game, I remember I was doing an interview courtside with our announcers and I could even hear them through my headphones and it was great to be able to give that moment to them.

They've been supporting me when I get in at the end of the games all season and they're, they're always room for my success.

So that was a great moment.

There's definitely a big sense of community when it comes to the student section in Orange Krush.

I have so many friends and met so many different people throughout my years of Orange Krush that when we rushed alma mater after the Elite eight win over Iowa, just seeing all of the different friends and people that I met over the year and really being able to celebrate that with all of them was just an incredible feeling.

It really made that win feel even more special and having that organ game with everybody so loud and so energized when AJ was able to come into the game, it is just so evident that how much people care about Alana basketball and each other.

It is been almost 18 years since I got my first board and I get just as excited to go skate as I did when I was a kid, if not more excited.

Skateboarding culture is like my life, right?

It's the most important thing for me.

What's so different about skateboarding is like people don't look the same.

Sometimes they kind of look the same, but sometimes it's just all over the place.

They're all skating together, having a good old time, everybody's getting high fives.

Pretty.

Good.

Yeah, that's how I've probably made most of my friends all through skating.

Skateboarding's really interesting because you don't really need an introduction with somebody when you skateboard.

You might go to Spalding Skate Park and you'll see the same faces over and over again.

You might end up skating next to those people for years.

It might have been 10 years at this point.

You still don't know their name, but that's the homie.

When.

We got all these people around here, I think it's super cool because you get to talk and meet so many different people and get to hear so many different stories, see so many different tricks that you maybe don't even know was possible.

Something that draws skaters in is definitely skeuwep, skeuwep's like, If you ask a skater here and you say, where did you get your board?

I bet 90% of them would probably say skeuwep.

A skateboard community without a skate shop is missing a big portion of the community itself.

I feel very blessed to be in the position that I am in providing this space is a similar option to a skate park or a spot where people tend to hang out and skate at, so they might swing by the shop, hang out for a while, talk about life and that gives 'em the juice to get out there.

What we do here, fix up people's boards, make sure that anybody who comes in hopefully leaves with a little bit more knowledge than what they came in originally with.

So yeah, just any type of repair we do.

And then of course, getting clothes, shoes, skateboard, accessories, just little fun stuff that you can skateboarding on and off your board.

Running a skate shop is a very niche business and being in central Illinois where the weather is not ideal for skateboarding five months out of the year, skate shops are few and far between, but dude, when you love something, it doesn't matter.

Dude, I totally understand why skate shops give up for sure.

I get it.

I can't do it.

I can't do it yet.

Hell no.

So that's why it's like.

That was wild.

You did that so casually, bro.

Dude.

Can.

I see that clip?

I can't not practice Aikido.

It feels like once I've discovered this with the community and the art and philosophy around it, it's something that kind of impossible to put down and it's kind of become just a integral part of my life that I just really love.

When I was 10 or 11, my dad showed me this video from Taiwan of this really small person throwing a bunch of larger people and he was telling me how it was Aikido and stuff and then I thought it looked really cool.

Aikido now is breathing.

It's like it's so much a part of my everyday life that if I don't come here for a few days, I feel like something's missing from my life.

All the kids and all the adults here are my extended family.

So keto is predominantly a martial art that uses the other person's energy against 'em.

It's generally a peaceful art, but because we do a lot of throwing, we have to learn how to fall.

Since I started Aikido, the teachers here, they really drilled into me.

Rule number one is to get out of the way.

No matter if anyone tries to attack you or anything bad happens.

The first step is just to try and diffuse the situation.

My experience working with Knut Bauer has been really great.

He has taught me a lot of things other than just Aikido and obviously he has taught me a lot of Aikido, but all of that stuff transfers over to my daily life too.

Henry's my only can't you say right now, so a can't you say is a special student, so that's somebody that will commit to training on a regular basis.

One of the things that I always remember that my teacher told me is he said to him, the most valuable student in his words were the ones that cleans the bathroom quietly.

Unobserved, can't you say?

As a person that understands all that commits to not only practicing regularly but practicing with everybody and do all the behind the scenes things that nobody else is aware of.

My experience with Henry has been very phenomenal over the last couple of years that watched him really progressed tremendously.

The thing that's really impresses me about him now is that I think for his size and weight, I think that he's actually one of the strongest people in the dojo because he's very fearless that like this morning he was by far the smallest person in the crowd and everybody was bouncing off of him.

And then we had a lot of big dudes today and we were doing kind of a freestyle and Henry was right in the middle of it and throwing them all and he doesn't hesitate.

He's really making a lot of practicing.

He asks really good questions, so I'm really glad to have them.

I have a lot of techniques that I really like to practice, but I think my most favorite one is Gokyo, which it just translates to the fifth technique and I really like practicing Gokyo because you bring them up and you bring them down and I think it just feels like a very fluid and natural technique for me to do.

His attacks are really true and they're focused and committed so he can attack really fast and he can clamp down really hard because his own posture, his balance is so good.

I've grown so close to him.

He is almost like another one of my kids now, so he's my mentor.

As much as I'm his mentor.

I think I have definitely developed a passion for Aikido and it's become a really important part of my life and I really love coming back here and I try to come to as many classes as I can.

I think this passion has really been showing itself to me and I can tell that it's a passion because it's not just like, oh, it's another chore for me to do.

I am genuinely excited to hop on the car and drive over here every week to practice Aikido and see this community and do all the fun techniques and everything, and I think about it in my free time too.

If somebody wants to come here and start training Aikido, the first thing they have to understand is that we're not here to train people, to be cage fighters, to be m and a fighters.

It's a self-defense aspect of Aikido.

It's very important, but it's secondary to just the idea of just learning to get along with people.

The first thing you read when you come in here is this is a place where we learn to become better human beings, and for me, that's the most important part of Aikido, this.

Aikido area and Dojo, I feel like I'm treated more as an equal and not just another little kid that they're like, oh, pat your head and give you a piece of candy and then you leave.

I think it's like a family really, and after classes we chat a little bit and sometimes on Fridays they stop for a drink.

Obviously I'm not drinking beer, but I drink soda.

This is Henry's beer.

He's not going to drink it more.

They just talk about their days and everything just kind of freezes here.

When you step into the dojo, it's like you're in another world and it's like a new perspective and like a retreat for a lot of people here.

Being a special student, it's a great honor and I feel like I'm able to spread the joy of I keto to a lot of other people too.

What we're doing is trying to create that meaning, that link of what you're eating is embedded in community, has value and is connected as a part of something larger than yourself.

My name's Ian Nutting.

I am the owner of the space in downtown Champaign, Illinois.

I'm Liv, I'm the bar manager.

My name's Connor Lust, the executive chef.

My name's Mike Ingram and I run the open mic night here.

My name is Miles.

When I'm here and playing music, I play under the name Mars Olio.

So the space opened in 2023, but really it's all started with my hot sauce company back in 2021 and then getting really into food, what food could be, what it could be for a community.

Things got out of control.

I realized we had to either grow or it would perish, and so we decided to not perish and grow and now we have a restaurant bar and music venue in downtown Champaign.

There are different elements, different load stars things, part of a constellation of things that we sort of take with us.

I mean, one is providing a truly excellent and unique dining experience, like truly excellent food and meaningful food I guess I would say in all of this.

It's not just that your burger is the best burger.

I mean it may be that's great, but that meat came from a farmer that we know.

I can call that farmer.

How many people do you get a burger from where they can call the farmer where the cow came from?

That's not many people.

Speaking logistically as a chef, it's very nice to see where your things come from so you get an assurance of quality when you're working with stuff.

The best thing you can do to create good food is to use things that are in season and to use things that are local and to use things that have love put into them and work put into them.

That's respectable and it makes so much of my job so much easier just getting produce that I know is in season.

It's not from a greenhouse in the middle of the country somewhere where it shouldn't be growing.

Furthermore, logistics aside, just that relationship with the farmer is really rewarding and gratifying as a chef to be able to feature someone else's hard work and someone else's passion.

The other sort of mission of the space is providing I think a very all embracing, safe, loving atmosphere.

We are trying to love people and provide a loving space that is about good hospitality, about genuine care for the other.

Love and care are for sure at the heart of what we're doing, and that does mean letting people be themselves.

Also, it means feeding people who come to us in our hungry.

Word different not only in the fact that we're a restaurant and venue, but also I think in the way that we interact with the community and we do things for the community, like we do community meals every day.

We give 10 meals away to our unhoused friends.

But the element that has sprung up around us is this community desire for a more community oriented space for arts and music and things like that, so that's why we have open mic, open mic comedy, open drag.

These are the staples of the space that has really come to define its ethos and aesthetic, I guess.

So the space is one of the few music venues that we still have downtown.

We need spaces for people to try things out and be new and original and fresh and weird since we've lost places that are like that.

Having this space open is really helpful in that regard.

One of the really good things about independent art and local art is the ability to be unapologetically weird, to have a lot of room to try strange and off the wall things and of all of the physical spaces and safe spaces generated by people in Champagne Urbana, I feel like there are very few who understand that as well as the space.

It's like open mic night is this, learn how to be on stage, and I've always taken that really, really seriously.

I think it's a really important part of having a thriving music scene and arts community, but honestly just we try to foster as open mic hosts just a welcoming and inviting space and that just goes hand in hand with what the space does in general for people.

I think we're doing really, really cool stuff here and I'm really grateful to be able to be a part of this group of people.

It's a fun time.

I love it.

I feel weird often trying to take any sort of credit for what the space has done because it's not dead weight here.

There's not people who just show up for work.

You basically, because we're such a small crew, you have to care.

The space is far much more than myself.

It is the Space Force and it's even beyond the Space Force.

It's the community that has helped build us.

Anyway, we've got some more music coming your way in just a few minutes.

Go get, go, grab a drink, go make a friend.

I would like to see a few more of you in the pit next time.

The Mirror is a house show venue.

It's pretty much something run exclusively by the people who live there.

We tend to get more local bands, but as the Mirror has grown, we tend to get other touring acts like punk bands and stuff that come from other house venue capitals like Milwaukee, Chicago, Minneapolis, and such like that.

I'm Keaton Yarber.

I started The Mirror in 2021.

A house show is when a people or a group of people open their doors to strangers and bands.

You get a bill, you find out whichever bands you want.

You try to find some date to make it all work.

They show up and they tend to enjoy it.

Usually what we'll do is we'll have four bands playing and we'll take 10% of door just to cover costs.

We need to buy cleaning supplies and get stuff fixed and just all the menial stuff, but that's just enough to break even.

The rest, the other 90%, we just divide evenly among the bands and I think that's how it should be.

A lot of people who come, they kind of see it just like a party.

It's a party with music.

It's terrible there.

I think there's still throw up on that curtain right there.

Bands, for instance, from New York will travel across from New York where they played a nice venue through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, which don't have as many nice obscene as many spaces.

They'll pay them well and then they get to Urbana and someone actually pays them more than a hundred bucks a century.

The UI uc scene definitely has a reputation that's enough to draw decently big acts.

The beginning of last semester we had frax, which is a hyper pop artist in past years, I know Freako has played here, Harrison.

Gordon has played here.

It's not just like, oh, my friend's band is going to play.

It's like you get actual good music.

It is pretty unique to be able to see a legitimate band for $7 in someone's living room.

I think that's pretty special.

The focus is on the community aspect and everybody helping each other.

It's not as transactional and you're not trying to make a huge profit yourself.

You're just kind of having fun with it.

It seems like in the last couple years what's been happening more and more is they've become more widely known about.

When I started the Mirror, there were a couple venues.

Now I think there's a lot more variety in the venues and the scenes.

It's like there's different sub genres of places that cater to more specific niches like DJs or certain genres like hardcore and stuff like that.

But I also think there's a big rise in people trying to make a profit out of it.

They make it harder for people.

To come and enjoy if they don't have a lot of money to pay for the cover, and I think that goes completely against the spirit of the house shows.

Something that sets her banner apart is definitely the variety of talents and how everybody contributes, but I think most places have something to that level, but just not at this scale.

So many photographers that are talented graphic designers, tattoo artists, vendors making things and selling them at shows, it's just the perfect place.

Everybody that's kind of like you will be all in one spot.

The scene's way better down here.

I feel like this is what shows used to feel like.

I much more prefer being on a stage when somebody's standing next to me hitting into my guitar than to be six feet up in the air looking down on other people.

I enjoyed it.

It was a good time.

A little worried that floor might cave in, but I guess that's part of it, right?

I was in the sound booth right behind the stage and it was about midnight.

We were on the last band.

Someone came up to me and was like, the floor is broken.

The support beams cracked beneath the floor in one of the rooms, so we had to kick everyone out and there will be no more mirror shows because our floor is broken.

All right.

There is why hit shut down.

Yeah.

That's.

Why.

It's shut.

Down.

I kind of wish we had a few more shows, but I mean it's a lot to run a house show.

Alright, well goodbye.

Goodbye.

Such wonderful work.

We had such a great time working with you guys over the past five months.

It was so great to meet you all and I think you guys all chose really wonderful stories.

Was it also a positive experience for you?

Yeah, I mean, I think anyone who's ever been in school knows that group projects can go one way or the other, but for us, this was probably one of the best group project experiences I've ever had, and I think we can all agree.

Everyone's idea was so creative and original and I would've loved to work on any of the other segments and yeah, I've really loved working with the Prairie Fire team, working with Allison.

I'm really proud of all the work that we've done and I wish I could do it again.

Yeah, and I mean adding on to that, I think it allowed us to get into the community and meet some really interesting people, which is something that was really valuable for me.

I would've never met these people otherwise, and I think all of the segments were about community in one way or another, which I think was really special as well.

Wonderful.

Thanks for joining us on the student edition of Prairie Fire.