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A COMMUNITY IN Galway are being given the opportunity to own a share in a new local radio station through an annual membership scheme of €20.
Kinvara FM, a new community radio station based in the south Galway village, has received a 30-day licence from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, running on the bandwidth 92.4FM.
Broadcasting began at the beginning of this month, from its studio in the centre of Kinvara.
A local resident, Gerry Wallace, came up with the idea of starting up a station in the area and set up a meeting to discuss the project.
About 40 people showed up.
From there, a committee was set up and they made the decision to fund the station through a co-op system.
“There had to be some sort of structure. You either have to be a company limited by guarantee or a co-op,” Kinvara FM board member Frank Hall told TheJournal.ie.
“We decided to go with the co-op because we thought it’d be the easiest. That way we can have unlimited members and it can be totally community-owned, anyone in the community can have a share.
Community radio is its own sort of thing, it’s a local-based effort and it’s supposed to remain locally focused, so it becomes a real community integrated system.
Annual membership of the station is €20 – allowing the people of Kinvara to own a share in their local radio station. The subscription also allows members a vote at the general meetings, giving them an aspect of control.
In the 18 months since the committee was formed, a studio has been equipped, a transmitter purchased and volunteer presenters have been trained to certificate standard.
The station plans to host a variety of shows, such as music, children’s, sports and science themed.
The station is set to celebrate its launch by broadcasting live on stage at the Cruinniú na mBád festival in the village on Saturday week, where the station will also launch its membership drive.
“We haven’t even launched our membership campaign but we already have a good 30 people. Our goal is to get about 200 people by the end of the year,” Hall said.
“To be honest, we don’t know how it’ll go because we’re only starting. I think the people are into it and people are happy to have an ownership in it.
I think it’ll draw people in, but it doesn’t matter as long as the radio station functions as a true community radio that’s giving a voice to local people.
Kinvara FM is currently broadcasting on Saturdays and Sundays between 10am and 8pm.
For more information about the station, you can visit www.kinvarafm.com.
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No one seems interested in the basic function of farming, creating food.!Any suggestions on what we should eat when all the rewilding is complete!
@Tommy Lennon: Nearly all the food we produce is exported though, so rewilding vast swathes of land wouldn’t affect our access to food.
@Tommy Lennon: Heather!! This hogwash is really going overboard. 5.2 Million people have to eat something!!
Few years ago they couldn’t give away enough money to reclaim land, bogs were drained, ditches bulldozed to make fields bigger now give more money to put it back, what next
@Andy Murphy: it’s as if priorities can change over time.
Mad, Ted!
@Ciaran Foster: or money changes hands ?
Totally agree. I bought the book from Eoghan back in December as a present but could not stop reading it.. great eye opener when walking around any nature area and looking at our human shaped environment.
Bought the book. Eoghan knows what he is talking about, we should listen
Lord save us from this stuff, so we return good farmland to the so called wild bush,
I have known so called farmers like this and they were to lazy to work their land and produce food, this was their cop out for not working their inheritance farm,
The boyo who wrote this article seems like one of them.
@Ned: You sound bitter. Were they “to” lazy to learn to spell also?
Every day I read or hear about another demand from the “Green Agenda”. Previously I would have considered myself environmentally conscious but I have rapidly become less so due to the polarised views presented.
More tree planting, ditch fertiliser (go organic) , drop bovines and ovines 20% in favor of grains and vegetables. Pay farmers to do so. Targets met… Simple..and it will be done.
Folks, do yourselves a favour and read his book.
Great book, highly recommend!
I’ve no problem to pay farmers to rewind their farms
But let’s house the homeless fix our health first eh?
We should change our approach to land use. A farm should be an inclosed area where sheep / goat / cows won’t go outside to graze on every little tree sapling. Same for sikka deer that has gone out of control in recent years. Nature and biodiversity has no chance in this country atm.
There are 8 Billion people on this planet that have to be fed every day and this idiot wants us to grow weeds. Enough of this nonsense. No matter what we do on this little island it will make little or no difference to global warming. We’re not the cause of the problem, but we could help alleviate the consequences.
@Liam Dunne: well we are the cause of the problem, rich countries like ireland are the ones who consume the most and produce the most carbon per capita, we still contribute to the overall problem
@Liam Dunne: It’s not about global warming, it’s about biodiversity. Read the article, then try reading some books.
We need all houses to be carbon neutral…citizens deserve at least cheap/free heating.
I’ve noticed a lot of hedgerows getting torn out of grazing fields near me over the last 2-3 winters.
It makes little sense, the farmer only gains a few square meters of space. Then any farm animals in the fields lose shelter from the elements during wind, rain & heat.
And of course nature loses its last piece of wilderness on the edge of the field.
Is there some sort of subsidy to do this sort of work or why is it being done?
So you want us to pay farmers to not work on the least viable part of their land. Sure.
@Dan Dare: they would need money to maintain fences to keep deer, sheep & goats off the land while it recovers.
Kill an extra quarter of a million cows a year and rewild as much land as possible . What will people eat if this goes ahead ? And there is no point in saying that we export most of what we produce as if that makes its consumption somewhere else on the planet irrelevant
Unbelievable, I grew up in a large farming community. Farmers are so so wealthy. The new generation of farmers are splashing the cash, massive mansions, big 4×4′s, new cars etc. Some small farmers may struggle a little like the rest of us. But the cash the big dairy guys are rolling in is unbelievable!
have your say