Programming Social Change

BARBARA NiKONOROW '90 brings Moppets to Kosovo.

When the documentary The WorldAccording to Sesame Street premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival in January, moviegoers saw what "Basia" Nikonorow has witnessed as European producer for Sesame Workshop: Muppets have the power, to inspire social change.

The documentary featured Nikonorow and the team behind Kosovo's edition of Sesame Street, a 2-year-old television program that strives not just to educate and entertain children, but also to improve relations between the country's Serbian and Albanian populations. "In Kosovo, where the ethnic conflict is so tense, one of our main curricular focuses was mutual respect and understanding," says Nikonorow. "These two-minute, documentary-style bits enable kids to see a window into the world of another child. They show these different ethnic groups that they're normal kids, just like me."

In addition to the Kosovar production, Nikonorow also oversees the German, Dutch and Russian productions of Sesame Street. She's based in New York, where she lives with husband Antoine Vivas Denisov and two sons, and travels abroad several times a year to meet with the writers and production teams for each show. "I love being able to work with people who come from different backgrounds and learning the cultural differences in humor and storytelling," says the multilingual Nikonorow, who was born in New York to Polish parents and lived in Brazil for five years as a teen.

Although she was a comparative lit major at Dartmouth, a documentary film class senior year inspired Nikonorow to attend film school. After studying cinematography at the Polish National Film School, she worked for four years as a producer and director for a film news show for Canal Television in Warsaw before moving to Sesame Workshop. "I love the fact that we're creating a really good alternative to crummy TV and, in some places, creating one of the only TV shows for a preschool audience, "Says Nikonorow, whose favorite Muppet is Pino, Big Bird's turquoise, Dutch cousin.