From KCRW’s promotional material for Cargoland, with images courtesy of filmmaker Alex Hallajan.

All too often, the massive port complex comprised of the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles is conceived as this powerful, autonomous thing that is removed from humans but vastly affects them. However, thousands of men and women depend on the ports in a variety of fashions, help us receive essential goods, and are the forgotten faces of a power that seems to lack human scale.

This is why KCRW and Brooklyn independent radio guru Lu Olkowski have paired together for a KCRW series, Cargoland, that humanizes the tale of the ports through a series of five stories. The series comes as part of KCRW’s Independent Producer Project, a hub that permits the radio station to support the work of various freelancers and independent producers.

“This type of engagement allows us to do more creative things, and broaden our own scope,” says producer Jenny Radelet said. “As far as commissioning pieces, we get to do so from our people who are our boots on the ground… This is where Cargoland comes from.”

What will be one story a day to be aired during each weekday next week, Cargoland was initially just an idea back in the beginning of 2013 between Olkowski and KCRW. Of course, Radelet was immediately interested in Olkowski’s idea about telling the human tales of the ports—after all, we’re talking about a radio producer who scored the Edward R. Murrow Award for her Black As We Wish to Be series. (Not to mention she made it big after highlighting a woman who sends the inner sounds of vaginal contractions into space in the hopes of contacting alien life.)

“Jennifer Farro [the General Manager of KCRW] had been hovering over the idea but it was Lu who really presented into a tangible project,” Radelet said. “And Lu gave us what we were looking for: a very human look into the ports, behind the gates and introducing you to the people who work and live down there. There’s Richard, the casual who has been waiting for a decade to get into a union. Or linesman Johnny O, a man who has many jobs and loves the port but embodies the spirit of change.”

The five stories to be presented in Cargoland each air on a different KCRW program due to that fact that each story varies in tone, subject and length.

But beyond that, the process of the creation of Cargoland has brought KCRW a plethora of collateral content: Lu’s photos from her visiting the ports will become an interactive online experience for viewers while other programs not directly associated with Cargoland will have port specials, such a history of the ports to be featured on Morning Edition and the discussion of our massive exporting of garbage.

In the end, however, it is about the people in Cargoland.

“These stories aren’t hard news,” Radelet said. “It’s about creating a connection between listeners and the community in the ports, the people who have worked down there for years, who have their lives down there. It’s more artful than hard-hitting news. It’s audio-art.”

Cool side note: Cargoland‘s promotional material has featured Orange County filmmaker Alex Hallajan’s time-lapse footage of the Port of Long Beach. The film artist spent a month using his cameras at various locations throughout Long Beach to time-lapse the loading and unloading of goods, the trucking and packing, the going and coming at the Port of Long Beach. According to Radelet, there’s a possibility of future projects between KCRW and Hallajan.

Cargoland begins next Monday, December 1, on KCRW.