A lot is happening at ArtSound.

Read on for news about:

  • Governor General: ArtSound Patron
  • 2025: The Membership Year
  • First Winter Concert
  • Young Virtuoso Competition
  • Visitors to the Studio
  • Programming update
  • Call for radio-drama scripts
  • Bart Meehan play
  • Bert Whelan, 90
  • ArtSound production unit
  • Canberra Southern Cross Club sponsorship
  • ArtSound’s podcasting meetup
  • 2025 membership marathon
  • Donations
  • How you can help
  • Seeking volunteers for the Welcoming Committee

 

Governor General: ArtSound Patron

ArtSound is pleased to announce that the Governor-General, Her Excellency the Honourable Ms Sam Mostyn AC, has accepted ArtSound’s invitation to become our Patron.

ArtSound is the first community radio station in Australia to receive Governor General Mostyn’s patronage.

The honour recognises ArtSound’s contribution over 40 years to the Canberra region and its artists.

2025: The Membership Year 

By now most of you will know that the Governor-General, the Honourable Sam Mostyn, has agreed to be Patron of ArtSound. I’m delighted that we have her support and thank all in the ArtSound team who pursued this patronage.

There are some in the ACT who have been quick to dismiss ArtSound as “just” a radio station. We are far more than that and the Governor-General’s endorsement gives us an opportunity to strengthen our profile in the Canberra community and continue the decades of support we have given to local arts and artists.

However, we need more than a high-profile patronage to achieve our goal of making Canberra one of Australia’s great centres of the Arts.

We need you.

Without the volunteers and members who provide both resources and financial support we cannot optimally function. While grants cover some of our technical and transmission costs, it is membership fees and donations that support our day-to-day activities. That is why we have designated 2025 as The Membership Year and have set a goal of doubling our membership by December. (Currently membership dues account for less than 10 percent of our annual income; can we bump that up to, say, 15 percent by year’s end?)

With that in mind, I thank you for being part of ArtSound and ask that you continue to help by encouraging family and friends to join our team.

  • Bart Meehan, President, ArtSound

CBF grant

ArtSound gratefully acknowledges a grant of $49,208 from the Community Broadcasting Foundation, announced on June 3.

The Development & Operations grant will permit us to push more than $34,000 closer to completing our Digital Upgrade Project, currently under way. The grant also includes $13,885 towards our annual operating costs.

Applications are scored according to published assessment criteria and then ranked by the CBF’s Grants Advisory Committees.

For its Development & Operations grants, the CBF designates several funding streams: Transmission, Ethnic, First Nations, RPH (Radio Print Handicapped), RPH Transmission, Business Training, Training, and finally General, the category ArtSound falls into. To qualify for funding in the General funding stream in the current round, applicant stations had to score 75 percent or more according to the CBF’s measures. ArtSound’s application scored 89 percent.

ArtSound President Bart Meehan said he is delighted by the news: “This grant will fund the studio upgrades we need to continue being a leader in community radio. I want to thank everyone who worked on this application especially Peter Monaghan and Chris Deacon. ArtSound succeeds because of the hard work of our team members.”

First Winter Concert

Get ready to swing into winter with the vibrant sounds of Spectrum Big Band, one of the esteemed combos within the Canberra City Band. As part of the centenary of the organisation’s founding in 1925, ArtSound is proud to present the Spectrum band, a vital part of the Canberra jazz scene since 1998, performing a special winter fundraiser for ArtSound.

The band is embarking on an exciting new musical chapter, under the baton of its new director, AJ Dangerfield.

Join us at the Polish White Eagle Club in Turner on Sunday June 15; the music starts at 2pm.

The band performs iconic hits from the past along with exciting new arrangements of more contemporary tunes.

Young Virtuoso Competition – can you help?

Each year, ArtSound hosts the ACT regional finals of the Young Virtuoso Competition, which identifies outstanding Australian classical music performers. The event offers ArtSound an excellent opportunity to demonstrate its support for talented performers in the Canberra region.

Could you help ArtSound to stage the ACT leg of the competition? We’d be most grateful for sponsorship covering the cost of sending the ACT winner to the nationals. This year, those will be in Adelaide. We cover the regional winner’s travel and accommodation expenses to attend the final.

If you can help, please contact us at admin@artsound.fm or phone 6295 7444 Monday-Friday 10am-2pm and ask for Julie Finch-Scally.

Visitors to the studios

During May, ArtSound had more visitors who will take part in our Pacific Neighbours program, which is in development.

Luis Zeceña, Chargé d’Affaires at the Embassy of Guatemala, came to the studios along with Lara McLellan, who is the Executive Assistant at the Guatemalan Embassy.

Also visiting was Her Excellency Ms Beatriz De La Fuente, Ambassador of Chile, who will come back to the studios soon for a recording.

ArtSound is preparing Pacific Neighbours as a new weekly radio program featuring the music and culture of Australia’s Pacific Neighbours. To date, we’ve recorded episodes with diplomats from the embassies of Colombia and New Caledonia, and have lined up a few others.

Her Excellency Ms Beatriz De La Fuente, Ambassador of Chile, left, with ArtSound’s Julie Finch-Scally. Below: Luis Zeceña, Chargé d’Affaires at the Embassy of Guatemala.

We’re defining “Pacific Neighbours” quite liberally, casting our net as far afield as South-East Asia to the northwest and western South America to the east.

If you’re from that broad region, and knowledgeable about your nation’s musical heritage, and would like to take part in the program, please get in touch. You can then work with an ArtSound producer who’ll do all the techie stuff while you simply talk a little about your country’s music.

Please get in touch via help@artsound.fm.

Programming update

In May, the Saturday morning program, Celtic Heartbeat (7-9am) ended, and was replaced by two one-hour programs.

Now at 7am you can hear The Folk Show. As they’ve done for 40 years, Radio Adelaide’s Julie & David Cavanagh, David Long, Margaret Monks, Jane Bower, and Eric Ford present the best in Australian and world folk in both traditional and contemporary styles.

The program comes from CRN, the Community Radio Network, a division of the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia.

So does our new 8pm offering, In Conversation, in which Michael Morton-Evans from 2MBS Fine Music FM Sydney chats with Australians you’ll find as interesting as he does, focusing on arts and culture, classical and stage.

And, as reported last month, Saturday afternoons have seen a change, too. At 5pm, The Magic of Music, one of the series in the expansive Bert Whelan’s Golden Years of Music project, has returned, replacing Music Collector.

In the series, Len Power presents music selected by Bert, who has a formidable knowledge of music ranging from the classics to light orchestral to the American Songbook and Broadway, as well as film music and popular 20th century songs.

Bert Whelan has worked with ArtSound colleagues for many years to create his fine, multi-program series. In the past it has included The Gershwin Project, Light Orchestral Hour, Music from the Movies, I Love a Piano, and The Great Songwriters.

Another series in the project, You Must Remember This, continues to air at 4pm on Saturdays, so you can now enjoy two hours of Golden Years of Music.

Call for radio-drama scripts

You, too, could be featured in an ArtSound Radio Players production. If you have a script that would be suitable for radio, or even an idea for a radio play but you’re not sure where to start, get in touch with ArtSound Radio Theatre, which airs Sundays at 4pm (repeated Mondays at 10pm). The highly experienced troupe may be able to help. Write to help@artsound.fm.

Bart Meehan play

A short play that Bart Meehan wrote, which started its life on ArtSound Radio Theatre, is having a stage production in Wagga as part of the Riverina Water Ten x10 playfest.

Bart’s The Last Bus will run during the festival (15-17 June) in the Basement Theatre, Wagga Wagga.

ArtSound Radio Theatre specialises in developing and presenting work by local playwrights and actors.

Wanterwrite Wanterlove 

On Anzac Day, ArtSound broadcast Wanterwrite Wanterlove, Peter Stanley’s play about historian Charles Bean’s time spent working at the Tuggeranong Homestead in 1919. Bean not only wrote the first volume of The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918 while living there, he also met the love of his life, Ethel (Effie) Young.

After the broadcast Anne Carroll, Bean’s granddaughter, who lives in Sydney, contacted ArtSound. We were able to give her a copy of the broadcast, including an interview with Peter Stanley recorded by ArtSound Radio Theatre’s host, Bart Meehan.

Anne Carroll replied with photos of her grandparents, and wrote to Bart:

“I enjoyed your interview of Professor Peter Stanley as your questions have helped me to understand the type of things and aspects of Charles Bean life and works that interest people.

“Many years ago, Peter and I first met when Peter ‘played’ Charles Bean, at a Minders of Tuggeranong Homestead (MOTH)-hosted function when attired in a dinner suit ‘Bean’ addressed the assembled dinner guests from a lectern.

“Following the broadcast of Wanterwrite Wanterlove, Peter has written to me separately with some background describing it as a play based on his imagining, but based on history, of Tuggeranong in 1920.

“To me, one of the features of the play is how after the War one man was unable to look to the future and another who, despite being described as having ‘faced death more times than any man in the A.I.F.’, was able to do so. Erskine Crawford’s story is a sad one.

“A psychologist friend has suggested that by writing up his war diaries virtually every night Bean was, in a way, debriefing himself from the traumatic events that he witnessed and experienced. Additionally, the future was in Bean’s thoughts during the War: the establishment of the A.I.F. Educational scheme for returning soldiers; repatriation of the troops; his book for peace In Your Hands, Australians; the Gallipoli Mission visit; the ‘War Museum’ and the History. Bean’s biographer, Canberra resident, Peter Rees, has described Bean as a ‘social missionary.’

“I remember my grandparents well. Effie (1893-1991) was very proud and caring of Charles.

“During the interview Peter mentioned Effie carried a small leather wallet in her handbag with photos of Chas. A photo of this and some other photos of Effie and Charles in their senior years are attached.

“Thank you for enabling me to listen to the play, which provides a personal angle on the man who loved to write and who enjoyed a long and loving marriage.”

Life Member Bert Whelan, 90

Longtime ArtSound program producer — and now life member — Bert Whelan, turned 90 in April. He marked the event with a luncheon gathering of family and friends.

Image: Bert, left, with ArtSound presenter Stuart Warner

Bert, a Life Member of ArtSound, recently moved from Chifley ACT to Lake Macquarie. Stuart Warner, one of ArtSound’s Senior Memories presenters and a close friend of Bert, was privileged to attend the party held at the home of his son Craig and his wife Vanessa.

Bert has been an active supporter of ArtSound for many years and has produced many programs that you hear on air as part of the ArtSound mix. Three of Bert’s projects are heard on Tuesdays and Fridays as part of the Senior Memories program.

At the luncheon Stuart conveyed the best wishes of all ArtSound members and listeners and presented him with a birthday card signed by many of the ArtSound presenters and friends who have known Bert.

Well done, Bert, on reaching this milestone. Keep producing your programs and enjoying the warmer days in Fennell Bay!

ArtSound production unit

Do you have skills or ideas for audio production? For example, have you wanted to create a series of short items about some aspect of ACT-region arts and culture?

In recent months, ArtSound has formed a communications unit to help get the word out about our activities and events. Now we’re doing something similar around production — specifically, production of promotional and sponsorship (advertising) announcements, along with short items to drop into our regular programming.

The latter could be, for example, segments about Canberra-region arts, culture, history, architecture, social services… They could be anything that fits into our overall programming ethos.

ArtSound has the production capacity, and producers already working in this area of content creation. If you’d like to join them, or have ideas to share, get in touch via help@artsound.fm.

Canberra Southern Cross Club sponsorship

ArtSound is back on the Canberra Southern Cross Club Community Rewards list, which allows ArtSound supporters to contribute to our coffers simply by dining at the club’s various facilities.

Under the program, as a patron of the club, you can go to this link: https://csccmarketing.wufoo.com/forms/m1ti98210e4gdsx/ and add your CSCC member details. Then, every time you buy food and drinks at the CSCC, ArtSound will get 7.5% of what you spend, and the money goes towards our equipment upgrades and running costs.

It’s a sweet deal for all concerned.

ArtSound’s podcasting meetup

Members are invited to attend ArtSound’s fortnightly Podcasting Meetup. It’s an informal gathering of podcast enthusiasts who discuss and plan podcast skills and content.

The group generally meets every second Monday from 5:30-6:30pm in ArtSound’s dedicated podcast studio. The next meeting is scheduled for Monday June 16.

To inquire about joining in, write to podcast@artsound.fm.

2025 ArtSound membership marathon

Through all of 2025, ArtSound is running a membership drive.

Currently, membership accounts for about 10 percent of the organisation’s annual income. We’d like to double that.

The Board recently announced modest membership-fee increases. The new annual fees are: individual membership, $75; family membership $110; concessional membership (with seniors or student ID) $50 per year.

For a limited time, new members will receive a free copy of the latest ArtSound Press publication, Gertrude’s Sweetheart: Monologues for Readers and Actors.

ArtSound aims to increase the benefits that members enjoy. Already members, and non-members, receive 24/7 radio every day of the year, but we’d also like to increase the number and range of businesses that will offer discounts to our members. We’ll list these on our website’s membership page.

Can you help us to identify or recruit such business supporters? If you know of any that might be interested, please write to Bart Meehan (bart.meehan@gmail.com) with details (including any contact details, if you have them).

Or, contact us and talk about how you might help: admin@artsound.fm

Donations

We’re always grateful to receive donations to support our work, which includes featuring about 1,000 ACT-region artists on air annually along with specialty programming that supports and fosters arts activities in the ACT region.

ArtSound does this as an all-volunteer community radio station with expenses to run to more than $120,000 each year, almost half of it from the costs of transmitting to the ACT from Black Mountain and Mt Taylor.

If you can help, please do so. Simply use the QR code below to go directly to the ArtSound donation page. Or get in touch to talk about how you might help: admin@artsound.fm or 6295 7444.

 

Support ArtSound in any of many ways

Opportunities to help out at ArtSound are many. Some of them are:

Welcoming Committee members

Communications team members

Management and financial wizards

Advertising reps

Presenters

Program producers and assistants

Music library helpers

We should let you know that our music library is one of the most enjoyable areas of our operations, according to volunteers who have spent many hours there.

The key task is to catalog new additions to the CD library, and then process the CDs (e.g., with simple numerical codes) to make them findable within the collection.

Working in the library provides an opportunity to view many aspects of station operations, and edge one’s way into taking part in them.

All amidst friendly company.

Please write to help@artsound.fm or phone 6295 7444.

Seeking volunteers for the reception desk

Want to meet some of ArtSound’s presenters and get a better understanding of how ArtSound works, as well as contribute to the smooth running of the organisation?

ArtSound is currently seeking new members to join our welcoming committee! This role is on ArtSound’s reception desk and involves simple office administration work including clearing emails, answering phone calls, greeting visitors to the studio and other administrative tasks. It’s a great way to get to know ArtSound programs, listen to music while you work and meet some of the presenters.

Members of the Welcoming Committee generally do a 4-hour shift from 10am-2pm on weekdays, once a week or once a fortnight. There is also some flexibility if you prefer a different routine, or different hours.

If you are interested in knowing more about this role, or other volunteering opportunities at ArtSound, please email help@artsound.fm with your contact details and a description of how you think you can help, or phone 6295 7444 weekdays between 10am and 2pm.

Volunteers are the heart and soul of community radio, and we very much appreciate your interest in supporting ArtSound radio.

Please send your contact details and a description of how you think you can help to help@artsound.fm. Or phone 6295 7444 weekdays between 10am and 2pm.

 

ArtSound FM’s mission is to cultivate a vibrant arts community in the ACT region. Your memberships and donations sustain our year-long programming including our artist-centred features and interviews and our many broadcasts of live recordings of concerts in and around Canberra.

Thank you for being part of ArtSound!

Please go online to artsound.fm to take out membership or donate. Or, send your contact details and a description of how you think you can help to help@artsound.fm.

Or phone (02) 6295 7444 — if you don’t reach someone right away, please leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Donations of $1 or more are tax deductible.

ArtSound is an all-volunteer community radio station.

 

Please forward this newsletter to any possibly interested friends and family members. And if you have any suggestions about items to include in this bulletin, please send them to newsletter@artsound.fm at least three days before the end of the month.