Resonance FM, London’s rather unique, rather special, and some would say rather vital arts radio station, a station mostly run by dedicated volunteers and largely funded by the goodwill and donations of listeners, is holding a fundraiser …. The station really does fight hand to mouth for survival, to keep the equipment working and… well, shall we let Resonance‘s own Ed Baxter tell you? Read Ed’s words underneath this first image of some of the many items available to bid on via ebay as part of the on-line auction that is one of the aspects of current the fundraising drive. Please do support the rather unique station, it really is something to celebrate…. View all the auctions here, new pieces being added all the time
Dear friend, Resonance’s Annual Fundraiser continues till 21st February 2016. Do visit our on-line auction of items and unique experiences which is running on ebay here: about a hundred special offers, ranging from record bundles from Rough Trade, Strut, and Gearbox to artworks by Bob & Roberta Smith, Eleanor Crook and Peter Fowler, to gourmet experiences at Neal’s Yard, Wright Brothers and Roast… Something for everyone – at knock down prices! There are also live events over the next few days with Club Integral, Very Loose Women, The Relatives, Band of Holy Joy, and DJ Food.
Bella Freud
If none of this suits your tastes or pocket, do please consider making a charitable donation of any size on the Resonance FM site. In the last six months alone our supporters have allowed us to secure our five-year FM licence from Ofcom, launch two DAB platforms, and entirely overhaul our website. Resonance frankly relies upon your support!
What do we do with your money? At the moment the chairs are falling apart from over-use, the studio laptop has finally expired, and the piano and most the headphones need repairing. With over two hundred people each week using our small studios, wear and tear is inevitable. But we also want to improve our service and help more people fulfil their potential through making radio. Here, just one of our broadcasters – Leonore Schick – explains why Resonance is important to her. I hope her story gives you a flavour of how the station works – and why it is worth supporting.
IT’S PERHAPS SURPRISING that after all the cuts to arts and community infrastructure, Resonance continues to be so strong. It has had a huge impact on my life, having shaped me, trained me, provided me with friends, and kept me daydreaming. I heard about Resonance before I moved to London, so when I finally got to the city, I turned up on their doorstep. That was in September 2010. I spent the next three weeks shadowing engineers and updating the old WordPress website.
I also went along to the student protest with station programmer Richard Thomas and a couple of dictaphones to make a recording of the event. We got kettled for seven hours; even though he had a press card and could leave, Richard stuck around. I edited the recording, and that was the first Resonance broadcast I contributed to. What started that day is now what takes up a lot of my time: documenting activism. I make a podcast and blog about activists, and am currently working on a short film about a refugee solidarity group, London2Calais, and one about activists in Paris during Cop21.
In 2010, I also met the station’s project’s manager, Tom Besley. I’d just made a fifteen minute episode on the eating habits of spiders, and I wanted to make a half-hour one about a lock-house by the east London canal. I told Tom about my plans and he said we should make a film as well. Last year, Tom and I spent nine months in a community radio station in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, making broadcasts and 20 minute public information films which we toured in a mobile cinema!
Now back in London, with my friends Katherine and Emma, I co-present Very Loose Women, a weekly discussion show which has taken us on some excellent adventures. We went to Derry, to report on the Women of the World Festival; to Port Eliot Festival in Cornwall; to Brighton to speak at a conference on the future of radio; and to Manchester to pick up a prestigious podcasting award. But most importantly, we’ve been in the studio, interviewing guests, over-sharing, and meeting all the passionate and curious people who come through Resonance’s gate.
Leonore’s journey is surely unusual in the restless range of activities to which that initial, tentative broadcast led. But to my mind it also typifies radio’s unique user-friendly but transformative qualities and the ability of Resonance in particular to change people’s lives for the better. Bluntly – with your help and encouragement – that’s the kind of thing we want to keep doing.
Ed Baxter, for Resonance
Here at Organ we’ve been doing things with Resonance in different shapes and forms for quite some time, Marina Organ’s Other Rock Show currently runs every Sunday night on the station. Part of the Other Rock Show’s contribution to the fundraising was to commission a new painting
Wilfred (2016)
Sean Worrall – “Wilfred” (40cm x 50cm, acrylic, marker pen, spray paint, varnish, on canvas)” – A freshly painted piece, a painting of a 1980s boombox called Wilfred. Wilfred survived the GLC Hip-Hop jam of 1985 where he helped a robot-dancing team do battle on the Southbank (before the riot kicked in, he survived th3e riot as well). Wilfred still regularly broadcasts Resonance via 104.4FM while we’re out painting…
“Sean Worrall is an artist, and a (slightly reluctant) gallerist/curator. Currently based in East London where he runs Cultivate, a now nomadic gallery, previously defiantly housed in a space smack bang in the middle of Vyner Street.. Sean regularly exhibits both in galleries, alternative spaces and on the streets. Sean has also run Organ magazine, has presented a radio show on London arts radio station Resonance FM, run a long-standing alternative record label, put on hundreds of left-field gigs and music events. Mostly Sean is a painter…”
Other things of interest on the auction include, well go have a look, there’s loads of treasure, you can see some of the pieces of art, the music, the experiences and more in the images on this page, one of the stand-out items is a rare Frantz album, a clssic prog rock vinyl album in a gatefold sleeve – “Peut etre aux yeux silence by Frantz. A very rare original 1970 progressive rock LP by Frantz, released in France on private Cat Records label (CR 2001). Gatefold cover with attached 12 pages insert (contains track listing and lyrics). Condition is mint for record; sleeve is VG. Copies go for £80 typically. Courtesy L’alternative. Bid for this item on ebay here.
Bob & Roberta Smith painting – A painting by leading British artist and Resonance broadcaster Bob & Roberta Smith. Thank You For Listening. 30 cm x 30 cm, oil on board (2014). Bid for this on ebay here.
Bob and Roberta Smith
THE ORGAN 