12.04.24
Each year our Amps network comes together for our Forum, where we also host our annual Community Ideas Fund. Designed to enable an exciting collaboration between supporters of our network, Amps are encouraged to collaborate on and pitch a new idea that will result in a positive social impact in Dundee. The award exists thanks to our growing community; not only do the network vote at the Forum on which project receives the fund, but the award itself is funded by Amps subscriptions. It’s amazing to see this support stretch beyond our network through each project’s wider impact in the city.
This year, the network awarded the fund to a project that seeks to pilot a new community radio station and space in Dundee. In this blog we share more about what they hope to achieve.
Inspired by listening practices happening elsewhere, DDCR is a pilot project for sonic attunement in Dundee – an active community radio station and space for sounding and listening together, broadcasting out through the Keiller Centre and digitally via a dedicated website.
Our aim is to set up a new audio space, invite budding broadcasters to get involved and seek contributions for programming across all sorts of shows. We want to provide sonic space for those who want to share their favourite tunes, their niche earworms, their interesting interviews or their general conversation. We want to encourage an itinerary that covers a true cross section of the community of Dundee.
The hope is to highlight the voices of Dundonians, of those making the city their home, those whose practice is situated here and those who are growing what their practice might be here. We want to amplify, in very literal terms, the connections that can be forged through sound, and share the myriad of ways that sound can find space in the city.
Each with our individual interests in sound, and the ways that audio is interacted with / encountered, we are both exceptionally excited about enlivening ears, and encouraging making – with Becca’s love of radio and longstanding ad-hoc ways of contributing to radio programming – including producing her own radio show ‘The Squib’ for Skye FM – and Su’s sonic essence and experience creating sound works both for and across physical and digital spaces.
With a long term love of radio and the inclusive ways of listening that it promotes – and noting the sense of community that has formed around those that have a kindred ethos (Clyde Built Radio, Glasgow; EHFM, Edinburgh; Skye FM, Isle of Skye; Vers Libre, Bergen, Norway) – it feels that, outwith traditional options, there is a gap in Dundee’s creative ecology for this democratic and cared for medium.
All ears are invited! And all minds who would like to contribute to the radio schedule are very welcome to be involved. We’re hoping that by providing the platform as an invitation, the ways of the waves will buoy our community – notably the existing Amps community, and the network of individual podcast makers, audio thinkers, sonic tinkerers, record collectors and interested conversationalists that exist within it – to float ideas for shows that can be shared through the digital airwaves.
We have instigated a conversation with Hot Chocolate Trust, hoping to continue work which Su has undertaken with some of the young people there on listening and recording the environment of Dundee, as an opportunity to build on both the relationships made with the young people and to expand the outward sharing of what has been made together. The content, form and fabric of this would come from the young people, guided by Su and Becca. We would hope that the workshops might spark longer term contributions to the station, welcoming community convergence.
Being based at the Keiller Centre, we hope to add to the creative community that is finding form in this space for the city. A site that holds the multiplicities of Dundee, this feels like the perfect location to give something back – to all who pass through. By being visible in the centre, we are looking to emulate the internet ‘blethering’ that comes with moving through the space – the potential to bump into / to find the familiar / to meet new folk and widen the dot-connecting.
With ongoing conversations about physical space in Dundee, taking to the airwaves to share space collectively feels like an interesting experiment – to get folk making and thinking of how we hold space together, in the ether.
Plans are underway, and Creative Dundee will shares ways to get involved with Dundee Community Radio soon. If you’d like to be put in touch with Becca and Su to find out more, get in touch and we’ll connect you.
Becca Clark is a curator and producer based in Dundee, working on projects that create joy and make space for connection, conversation and questioning beyond momentary experience. With a focus on regional art festivals, Becca is co-director of Art Night Dundee. Her interests are collectivism, the commons, intersectional feminist-practicing and the possibles of sonic attunement.
Su Shaw is a sound artist, musician and producer based in Dundee, who creates and performs under the alias ‘SHHE’. Her artistic practice is influenced by environment and ecology, exploring themes of identity and connection at the intersection between sound, space and liminal states. Sound works, performances and installations have been presented at DCA, V&A Dundee, Dundee Rep, Edinburgh Festival, Cryptic Nights, Celtic Connections, Clyde Built Radio, NTS, Radiophrenia and overseas in Egypt, Iraq-Kurdistan, Portugal and Iceland.
This new collaboration was made possible through our Amps network’s Community Ideas Fund. Everyone in the network can choose which project they’d like to award the fund to at our annual Amps Forum – find out about the other amazing projects that pitched in 2024. This cash award is funded by Amps subscriptions each year – join Amps and help us make the fund bigger and better!
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