CultureWorks is a nonprofit media production company and educational institution founded by two-time Peabody Award-winning producer and oral historian Steve Rowland. For over 40 years, Steve has created documentary films and radio productions that bring extraordinary artists, musicians, and thinkers to audiences nationwide.
Steve Rowland is one of America’s foremost oral historians and documentary producers. His landmark works include “The Miles Davis Radio Project” — an 8-hour documentary narrated by Danny Glover that set records for radio audiences — and “Leonard Bernstein: An American Life” narrated by Susan Sarandon, both of which received Peabody Awards. He has also produced “Tell Me How Long Trane’s Been Gone,” a celebrated documentary on John Coltrane, praised by Professor Cornel West as “one of the best things ever done on the jazz giant.”
Over his career, Steve has interviewed hundreds of iconic artists and musicians, including Bob Marley, Quincy Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, Smokey Robinson, Stephen Sondheim, and Mstislav Rostropovich. His work spans jazz, classical music, theater, Shakespeare, mass incarceration & legacies of slavery and social justice — always centered on the power of human stories told in their subjects’ own voices.
Today, CultureWorks continues that mission through two major initiatives: a growing catalog of documentary productions available through ArtistOwned.com, and Time Out of Joint — an innovative, BIPOC-led educational project that employs formerly incarcerated people who love Shakespeare to lead free workshops for high school and college students across the United States.