May 2024 Newsletter

A lot is happening at ArtSound. Here’s some of it.

2024 is ArtSound’s Big Year of Fundraising

ArtSound’s newly refreshed Fundraising Committee is building on some recent successes to revive ArtSound’s financial fortunes after some tough years.

Our 2024 campaign will proceed on various fronts. During the year, we’ll hold an ongoing membership drive, an end-of-financial-year donations drive, and a full-fledged Radiothon in November.

We’ve recently held a successful Music Trivia Quiz Night fundraiser and have offered some public courses in broadcasting and podcasting skills.

There’s more to come.

GoFundMe

In one major thrust of our campaign, we’re using an online crowdfunding platform to raise money for essential technology upgrades. We are up and running on GoFundMe. As of the beginning of May, the campaign has topped $3500 of a target of $15,000. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to date.

Help us to upgrade our transmission gear. That will ensure we stay on air and continue to bring you the best specialist music and arts programming in the region (and streaming to the world).

It is expensive to provide quality radio. We can do it only because at ArtSound we have no employment costs, because we’re all volunteers. We have managed to raise enough funds every year for the past 40, but we now must replace vital broadcasting equipment, and that will take money we don’t currently have.

In 2005 station volunteers cobbled together our current studio broadcasting consoles, and those have served us well — as our on-air campaign promo puts it, they were “lovingly handcrafted in the Middle Ages.” But we’ll soon have to re-equip our studios and ageing transmitter at an estimated cost of well over $100k.

Without these upgrades ArtSound may become un-transmit-able and we’d then all be in-console-able.

You may or may not know that for some years we’ve been operating our transmitter at only partial power. That’s because lightning struck it in 2016. Technology Manager Chris Deacon, assisted by Roger Bean, has been optimising what’s left of it, so you’ll likely not have noticed. Among our current goals, though, is to acquire a new transmitter. It’ll greatly boost our signal clarity and reach and protect us against serious broadcast disruptions.

Raising the money is potentially urgent because a failure of the patched-up transmitter would be…. horrible! We’d need suddenly to find the money to get back on air.

Similarly, our analogue broadcast consoles are old – way beyond expected lifespan! – and we’d be very wise to upgrade them to spiffy new digital ones, pronto.

We’ll seek grants for part of these costs, but we need to find the bulk of them. So, we’re asking you to invest in the future of your good listening by contributing what you can to help. It’s your chance to make an impression on the arts in and around Canberra.

How can you help? Simply go to https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-console-artsound and follow the prompts. Or contact us and talk about how you might help: admin@artsound.fm

Thank you.

Canberra Blind Society

ArtSound has just completed a project with the Canberra Blind Society’s Mentoring Program, to help two of its project officers to create a set of podcasts. The recordings deal with a checklist of considerations workplaces can and should have when hiring or considering hiring candidates with vision impairment.

Podcast Meetup

Speaking of podcasting, ArtSound has started a “podcast meetup “where podcasters, whether beginners or with some podcasting experience, can come to discuss their projects, help each other with technical challenges, and so forth.

The Meetup is free with ArtSound membership. It’s casual, and ideal for anyone interested in learning more about podcasting or keen to get encouragement or support in what they’re already producing. We discuss such things as what gear to get, how to record and edit, and how to place podcasts onto websites. The group is an opportunity to gather with fellow Canberran podcasters, ask questions, and share draft podcasts for feedback.

We launched on Wednesday, April 17. You can still join and come to any of the fortnightly get-togethers. Please email programmingcommittee@artsound.fm with expressions of interest, and we’ll provide you with details. We’re aiming to meet twice a month, with day of week still being ironed out, from 5:30-6:30pm or a bit later at the ArtSound studios — specifically, in our dedicated podcasting studio.

Please share word of the ArtSound Podcasting Meetup with anyone you think might be interested.

The Wonders of Recycling

Every dollar counts when you’re striving to raise more than a hundred thousand of them. Such an effort requires that we fire on all fundraising cylinders.

If you have refundable bottles, cluttering up your kitchen or shed, please donate them to ArtSound. You might be surprised how much money an organisation can raise by cashing in refundable bottles and cans at depots around the city. We could reasonably aim for, say, $1000 this year, and at the same time provide you with a way to dispose of your piles of used cans and bottles.

Next month we’ll have a QR code that will allow you to deposit the bottles and cans to our account at any of the deposit depositories. Meanwhile, please bring them to the ArtSound studios at the Manuka Arts Centre – ideally Monday-Friday 10am-2pm, but at other times, to outside the front door too.

Ten cents per bottle adds up!

Another ArtSound Radio Play moves to the Stage

Canberra’s Green Oak Theatre Company will stage two plays by ArtSound Radio Theatre host, Bart Meehan.

Sir Harry vs The University and The Bridge will join Blame by Shaylie Gillies and INT.THEATRE by Amelia Chittick as part of Play Me Something, a production of four one-act plays that will run in the Belconnen Community Theatre in September.

A shorter version of The Bridge was broadcast on ArtSound Radio Theatre in 2021 and is the latest of several plays the station has helped progress from the airwaves to the boards.

ArtSound Radio Theatre airs Sundays at 4pm, with repeats Mondays at 10pm.

Refrigerator

We’re still looking for a donated refrigerator to replace the struggling one in the ArtSound kitchen. Could one of our kind ArtSound members or supporters replace the old clunker with a dependable, large one with ice compartment (in the base, if possible)?

If you can donate one, or buy us a more up to date one, please contact admin@artsound.fm or 6295 7444.

Thanks!

Can You Help?

The ArtSound Board and its fellow volunteers would like to establish a list of capabilities that members could bring to the organisation, when needed.

Do you have skills that you’d be willing to lend to the cause, from time to time? We’re sure you do.

Please let us know. Below are some areas where you might be able to help – but perhaps you have skills that we don’t know how to profit from, until you tell us!

Needs include:

Welcoming Committee: people who can volunteer four hours from 10am to 2pm one weekday a month, fortnight, or week. The members of the Welcoming Committee take care of the studio lobby: they greet visitors who come to be recorded or interviewed, monitor email, and often open and close the studios, all while creating a warm atmosphere and being warmly thanked by ArtSound presenters, program producers, and other volunteers.

People with electrical tag and test accreditation who can tag our cables each year to assist with electrical safety compliance. Tagging costs money; can you help us defray costs?

People who can write and would be interested in helping with our monthly newsletters (like this one) as well as scripts for sponsorship announcements and promotions and a potential host of other purposes. Writing for radio is simply a matter of putting words together that are easily read aloud and are compelling to listen to.

Grant writing: it’s arduous but somehow gratifying work, and the more of it we can do, the better. We’ve had good success of late, so now are ready to step up our game. Can we identify grant opportunities and improve our grant administration?

Management and financial wizards would be of great assistance for our Fundraising events. As we become a more thriving and expanding organisation, we’d appreciate help in keeping track of all our fundraising and commitments. In a city of public servants, we know you’re out there!

Advertising reps: Perhaps you’re a retired ad rep or salesperson who could help ArtSound to find businesses that would like to take sponsorships (advertisements) with the station. On-air announcements are potentially a major source of income to ArtSound, but to date we’ve lacked dedicated advertising staff, so have not been able to optimise this income source, even though we know plenty of likely advertisers are out there. We are legally permitted to run up to five minutes of advertising in any hour of programming. Even one minute each hour, from 7am to 10pm, would bring us enough to meet the station’s total annual unavoidable expenses – transmitter costs on Black Mountain and Mount Taylor, utilities at the station, and so forth.

In fact, that would permit us to triple our income each year, and investment in Canberra’s arts scene.

Presenting: We’re proud of the diversity in our programming. On a typical day, we broadcast 12 hours or more of locally produced live or recorded programs. There are also opportunities to produce pre-recorded programs including for our special Senior Memories program block, which airs each morning from 10am to midday.

Program Production: If you have experience in recording program content including interviews and/or in producing finished audio or program blocks, we’d love to hear from you. Or perhaps you have programming ideas and would like to learn how to use audio-editing software.

Concert Recording: ArtSound records concerts for later broadcast local, national, and international performers at venues in and around Canberra. Most concerts take place in the evenings or on weekends.

Music library: we can always use help in cataloguing and shelving CDs in the ArtSound music library. You don’t need to have library experience to do that, just an ability to carefully enter and track details. It’s quite fun, in a way only people of that inclination seem to understand.

This is just a list of the more obvious needs at the station. But perhaps your talents or qualifications lie elsewhere and would also greatly assist us. Perhaps you have a “working with children certificate” or a trailer we can use from time to time.

If you associate with artists of any kind, you could promote the station to them. Tell them about the benefits of membership, the opportunities to visit for on-air interviews or live performances, or our very affordable advertising rates (essentially, about one dollar a second), and our studio rentals for music or voice recording.

Any way you can spread the word is useful to ArtSound.

So, if you can help, 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 write to admin@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 $2 or more are tax deductible.

Please forward this newsletter to any possibly interested friends and family member.