Resonance104.

4fm
Activity report, 2005-2007
Edited version of a report to the European Cultural Foundation, Spring 2007

RADIO ART
In the area of “radio art’ which Resonance has made its own, there was progress
in the realisation of projects by the Resonance Radio Orchestra, which had been
supported in the previous year by the Gulbenkian and Moose foundations. The
Orchestral pool now numbers fifty performers, comprising musicians, sound
engineers and actors. The instrumentation includes laptop, tinnitus analyser,
vibraphone and harmonium, as well as more predictable instruments. Works
were commissioned from a dozen composers including Veryan Weston, Ben
Drew, James Dunn, Alfredo Genovesi, Andy Keep and Lewis Gibson. The
regular performers, in typical Resonance fashion, ranged from a 15 year old
bass-recorder playing schoolboy to a 75 year old actress. The actor Alastair
McGowan joined the Orchestra for a performance at the London Wetlands
Centre as part of the First International Pestival, a science and arts convention
dedicated to insects. Elsewhere, actors Nabil Shaban (Doctor Who) Tam Dean
Burn (River City, Tutti Frutti), Helena Stevens (Inspector Morse) and Lembit Opik
MP offered their services for free. Concerts were presented at the Roundhouse,
Dragon Hall, Conway Hall, the ICA and the Wetlands Centre. International
interest was indicated by the fact that one piece, “The Arthur Cravan Memorial
Boxing Match” (a group composition by eight of the core players), was awarded a
Special Nomination by Mexico’s Radio Educacion prestigious international radio-
art competition.
Station manager Knut Aufermann had left the station in February 2005 to travel
on the continent with his epic “Mobile Radio” project. He had helped establish the
“Radia” network and now took the Resonance aesthetic to radio broadcasters all
over Western Europe. He was also instrumental in securing EU funding for a
“Radia” intervention by Resonance FM, which featured the Resonance Radio
Orchestra under the direction of James Dunn alongside artists Loris Gréaud
(commissioned to make a new work by Anna Colin), Willem de Ridder, Jim
Whelton and Xper.Xr, in a live radio event at the ICA.
Through such interventions, we feel that we have partially located “radio art” as a
phenomenon that will gain currency in the near future. Already we find that within
the lifetime of Resonance FM, such institutions as the Frieze Art Fair and Tate
Modern are prepared to commission radio works alongside visual, sculptural and
installation pieces; while through series such as “Radio Gallery” (realised by the
young curator Anna Colin for Resonance in 2006), we have also expanded the
notion of what visual artists can achieve with radio as a medium.

SHOWS OF NOTE
Various shows reported significant developments symptomatic of the entire
schedule, which featured 150 diverse programmes: here are some of their
reports.
“The Bike Show” was featured in an article in Momentum Magazine. The show’s
podcast is highly ranked and downloaded by listeners worldwide a couple of
thousand times each week. The Bike Show continues to be syndicated by CKDU,
a radio station in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The show has continued to air diverse
episodes featuring writers, poets, artists, musicians, sportsmen and
philosophers.
For the past year the “Nostalgie Ya Mboka” show promoted a series of free live
shows at the prestigious Momo's club in Central London. This included the debut
performance of Konono 1er (winners of 2006 BBC World Muzak awards - best
new band), Kanda Bongo Man, Odemba OK, Dominic Kakolobango and Lokua
Kanza plus a host of others. It also created a badly needed live space for African
music in Central London. The “Londres Na Biso” show significantly ran the
Telephone Trottoire project which fused cutting edge modern technology with
traditional methods of communication to create a badly needed forum for
dialogue on refugee life and experience of living in London.
Programme maker Alex Fitch did a show in the series "I'm ready for my close-up"
on The Cinema Museum in Lambeth, holding a community event encouraging
people to share their old films and project treasures from the attic. Plus a show in
January about an American charity that protects freedom of speech and another
show last August about local film clubs in London boroughs that provide a place
for people to see rare films not shown at the cinema. The show’s podcasts each
get between 50 and 100 downloads a week and Alex’s blog with information
about "I'm ready for my close-up" gets around 40 hits a day. The show featured
interviews with Terry Pratchett, Nigel Planer, David Jason, Alan Moore, Bryan
Talbot, Pat Mills and Kim Newman. The series featured programmes on the
Lesbian & Gay Film Festival and also covered a community's backlash to the
closing of their local video shop (which got the show mentioned on their Green
Party councillor's blog: greenladywell.blogspot.com).
Six other community radio stations in the UK rebroadcast “The Two Degrees
Show.” Twelve other community radio stations in the UK are rebroadcasting “The
Low Carbon Show.” The shows’ climateradio.co.uk archive gets 1000 downloads
per month .The programme is picked up internationally through the Radio4All
portal (by stations in Berkley and Alaska, amongst others). Guests have included
Environment Secretary David Milliband, Caroline Lucas MEP, George Monbiot,
Professor John Schellnhuber (Chief Advisor on Climate Change to the German
Government) and David Griggs (director, Hadley Centre).
The “Pestival” in May 2006 was a major community event produced by Bridget
Nichols (the “Creature Curious” show) and Mark Pilkington (the ”Strange
Attractor” series) with assistant manager Max O’Brien. Devoted to insects and
art, it brought in over 10,000 people and arose as a direct result of Resonance
bringing like minds together and facilitating creative development. Bridget Nichols
also made her first archive documentary for BBC Radio 4 in September 2006 as
a direct result of being seen doing a Resonance live show; and Max O’Brien
assisted her on a trip to Jersey with the BBC’s Ariane Koek.
The programme “Fikarummet” was featured on the Swedish Radio P4 in October
2006. P4 is the biggest and most popular public service station (part of SR) in
Sweden and also the biggest medium in Sweden with over 3 million listeners a
day. The team were interviewed by the London correspondent about the show
but also about Resonance FM itself. The feature was broadcast on the show "P4
Extra".
“Rockfort” was the official UK media partner of the French music
festival/conference Europavox and conducted an interview with Charlotte
Gainsbourg.
The “OST” (original sound track) show is in regular communication with both
major and minor record labels and film companies who now supply the show with
regular tickets, giveaways and fine competition prizes every week. It is now in
contact with good PR companies that now gives the show access to even bigger
artists and stars: John Barry has recently been interviewed. Guests over the year
have included one of the “Little Britain” stars, BBC and TV comedy writers,
contemporary composers from all parts of the UK, journalists, fledgling labels,
museum curators, film makers, eclectic and international DJs, and the odd pop
musician. The OST show was featured in heavily in a large feature in Word
magazine (circulation 40k) about broadcasting in February 2006, occupying an
entire page, alongside DJs from BBC national radio stations. The show got
various mentions in The Independent and The Guardian. The host of the show,
Jonny Trunk, was part of a large feature in The Wire in November 2006. The
show has a regular phone in, a good way of monitoring audience. It had regular
calls from all regions of London, the home counties, Europe and regular calls
from LA and New York. The show receives good emails too, again from all over
the world.

OUR PROMISE OF DELIVERY

In this period, Resonance have met and surpassed its output commitments, as
follows:
Output 65% music and 30% speech.
Average live hours per week: 91.
Average live hours per month: 364.
Our music programming was wide-ranging and significant. We also premiered
several flagship radio-art broadcasts, including a day of live broadcasts from the
Institute of Contemporary Arts in September 2006; and four programmes
commissioned by Frieze Art Projects in October 2006.
Along with the aforementioned music and speech strands, we have also
broadcast weekly shows in Congolese French and Somalian. Weekly shows in
Serbian and Albanian were also broadcast. We launched a show addressing the
growing Polish community in London.
Resonance’s youngest regular broadcasters are aged 16, its oldest 75.
Resonance provided broadcasting opportunities to over 500 different groups and
individuals each year. Regular broadcasts were realised in six different
languages. New programming was instituted on a quarterly basis in 2006, with
one-off shows being scheduled at short notice, typically a month’s notice but in
some cases a couple of days.
Debate was encouraged through a variety of speech programmes which
addressed such matters as urban cycling, climate change, the political
landscape, displaced youth, refugee and diaspora issues, global conflict,
pensioners’ rights and the place of art and music in the life of the community.

EDUCATION
Resonance maintained a strong commitment to education, with extensive and in-
depth coverage of (for example) the debates around the pressing issue of climate
change. We worked with several institutions, including the Roundhouse Studios
and the British Council Connect Youth department, on training in radio
production. We nevertheless failed to establish the kind of strong bonds we had
anticipated with other institutions in our area, particularly universities.
We had more work placements than anticipated: each year the staff mentored a
dozen work placements ranging from one to two weeks, comprising 375 man
hours of training per annum.

NETWORKING
Over thirty students and researchers contacted the station asking for information,
which was supplied in some quantity. Staff members made presentations at over
a dozen conferences, discussing all aspects of the station’s service and
maintenance. Paperwork relating to the station, including minutes of meetings,
marketing surveys, financial reports, as well as press releases and transcriptions
of presentations to conferences, were made available to the three dozen people
who requested them. Resonance offered in-depth practical advice to five or six
parties wishing to establish community radio stations of RSLs. The programming
director replied to 9000 emails in this period.
An entirely new section of the website was built to make transactions between
the staff members easier and to enable forward planning, with matters such as
podcasts, website design, electronic mail facilities and electronic calendaring
being addressed here.
VOLUNTEER BASE
Resonance relies upon its volunteers: We divide these into two groups. First, 30
engineers and support workers, whose contribution ranges from technical set up
for live bands, manning the broadcast desk for programme makers, maintaining
the database and listings, cutting audio for repeats, and general office
administrative support work. This pool of volunteers works in four hour shifts
each weekday, with weekends comprising four shifts of six and a half hours
each. This gives a total of 86 man-hours per week. In addition, there is typically
one extra person contributing each week-day for seven hours, i.e. 35 man-hours
per week. The total for these pool of volunteers is therefore 121 per week -
about 6300 man-hours per annum. Number of hours worked on average per
volunteer per month (engineering pool): 19.36.
Secondly, there is an average of 150 people making content each week, some in
groups. These programme makers produce 91 hours of broadcast material each
week. Note that programme makers typically spend many extra hours on
preparing their programme than is indicated by the actual broadcast time
(typically between 15 and 90 minutes per week). A conservative estimate of the
preparation time for each hour of material would be three hours, which gives us
the following figure: Number of hours worked on average per volunteer per
month (programme makers pool): 4. This gives us a total of 31,200 man-hours
per annum for this pool of volunteers.
Other volunteer work, which includes website maintenance, trouble-shooting and
ad hoc advice, including help with small grant applications, audio editing and so
on cannot readily be estimated but perhaps accounts for in excess of 150 man-
hours per annum.
Fifteen new volunteers joined the team of regular engineering and administrative
workers. Ninety new regular programme makers joined the regular content-
providing team. Over three hundred people made one-off contributions, mostly in
the form of “Clear Spot” programmes. There was on-going skills transfer between
engineers and programme makers.

PUBLIC RELATIONS
Resonance maintained its strong links with The Wire magazine; Tate Modern;
Frieze Art Fair; and the Serpentine Gallery. It realised CD releases for sale on its
on-line shop, including a CD concerned with Climate Change. It initiated a
season of fund- and profile-raising live concerts which attracted several hundred
people and showcased dozens of musicians. Its press campaign benefited both
the station as a whole and many dozens of individual programmes, as well as
expanding the audience base. Its on-line podcast page allowed downloads of
signature programmes to a national and international audience of tens of
thousands outside the station’s FM footprint.
Our on-line Forum was busy, with 56,000 visits to the thread concerning our
improved transmitter. The number of Forum subscribers was 225. The number of
subscribers to the Resonance email list was 6,500. Many programmes have their
own dedicated website and list of fans, through which we were able to fund-raise
in a targeted manner, with great success. Via our email newsletter group we
attracted over 1000 people to an on-line marketing research questionnaire. This
year we established a MySpace page which rapidly attracted over 2500 regular
users. Programme makers were instrumental in fund-raising through broadcast-
related live events that drew on individual and specific audience bases.
Resonance was also the first community radio station to have a presence in
“Second Life.”
MARKETING
In December 2006, Resonance FM undertook extensive market research to gain
a clearer insight into the nature of its audience. It engaged a press officer for six
months better to establish itself in the mass media. Resonance featured over
sixty times in more than thirty publications ranging from British Archaeology to
The Guardian, from Angler’s Mail to Die Furche. From our marketing survey of
over 1000 listeners, we discovered that Resonance had inspired respondents to:
Laugh out loud (54%); Buy Music or Art (53%) Make Music or Art (43%); Visit
Somewhere in London (37%); Contact the Station (27%).

Images:
Members of the Resonance Radio Orchestra at the ICA, “radio.territories,”
September 2006
Bike! with Jack Thurston
American students prepare to record Resonance vox pops at Frieze Art Fair,
2006
Resonance in Second Life
Resonance at Frieze Art Fair, installation by Keita Egami, 2005

ends