Soundart Radio- Extraordinary!

A email received today, posted to the membership of Soundart Radio 102.5 fm

Dear All,

I would like to invite you to attend an Extraordinary General Meeting, at Soundart Radio on Tuesday 5th June, 4-6pm.

If there has ever been a time for as many members and supporters of the station as possible to come together, to plan the future, and to bring what they can to that future, it is now. Our funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation has now ended, and we have now heard that it will not be renewed. Though we believe the station has a long and healthy future, this future will depend entirely on the energy, creativity, enthusiasm and good will of volunteers.
We are operating in a climate of very limited funding for the arts, and there is fierce competition for any grant. The station, like all community radio stations, has fairly significant core costs to cover each year. We need to raise these in ever more inventive ways, whilst remaining true to our aims and ideals.
I believe that we, as a radio community, are uniquely and wonderfully creative, and still have an awful lot to achieve together. For this to happen, we need to meet in person all those voices we've heard on air, put our heads together, and be brilliant.

…I think there’s no finer community station in the UK than Soundart (there’s definitely not one I’ve found). I love the inclusiveness, the invention and the merry chaos I hear when I listen to you guys. Geoff McQueen

Hope to see you on Tuesday,

Lucinda  (Soundart Radio founder and Director)


OH! Its a sign of the times that a station that is so committed to making ground-breaking community radio is having difficulty keeping afloat - actually not a unusual situation for a community radio station either! ( Part of the licence agreement is no commercial advertising, which has to be counted as a good thing for the listener, but makes revenue generation tricky...)

Paul Hamlyn Foundation funded the assessment and the writing of the business plan through the first half of 2012. It is a very impressive document- a realistic business plan means a degree of honest critique - the document is not pie in the sky or bravado but offers some thing for Soundart Radio to grow into, something just as unique, but with a more definite commitment to resilience: something leaner, more market savvy, a radio station that will play stronger to the strengths of its community. Paul Hamlyn have invested several times to date in Soundart Radio- we know we have their support and best wishes, if not their financial backing this time.

Tuesday's meeting, in the middle of the afternoon, at the studio in Dartington, will be an opportunity to address some of the issues that have been holding Soundart Radio back, and to move forward . Its not lack of quality creativity, its never even been a delivery issue. I feel Soundart Radio - the membership- the volunteers and skilled radio makers -need to step up and become more capable of blowing their own trumpets :

“That's where Soundart Radio, a community and arts radio station for Dartington and Totnes in Devon, is so cheering: its setting couldn't be further from urban cool – you can often hear birdsong in the background –and yet its output is resolutely challenging.
I've been hooked for quite a while, relishing its oddness, its risk-taking –anyone can volunteer for the station – and its blend of the highly local and impressively far-reaching.”

 Elizabeth Mahoney, Radio Critic, The Guardian

Our 'business' of making collaborative, innovative and revolutionary radio just has to become more 'business like'? Wish us luck- keep tuning in- and come to the meeting if you can- the more voices / ears the better!