Like many people working in community radio, Helen Bath found her feet on air doing a fill-in shift when someone was away.
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“I started doing an hour. Then they said ‘can you do two hours?’, and that became the Community Voices program – and it went from there. That was in 2000.”
Helen is now the manager of Voice FM. The Ballarat institution is celebrating 30 years on air this weekend with an Open Day, and despite some rather frosty forecasts weather-wise, they are looking forward to showcasing the changes being made at the station.
“We operate on the smell of an oily rag, but we have a grant or a donation in place for any project we want to do. Change can be painful, but we’ve come through and I think the amazing thing is we are exactly where want to be as a radio station,” she says.
‘This last 18 months has been very much about a major IT project.We want to streamline processes so that when we get new volunteers, they can get started straight away, and that they can engage in the station and be part of the changes.”
The volunteers at Voice FM have gone through great skill improvements in recent times, and Helen Bath says the buzzword around the station is ‘proficiency’ and the pride that comes with that.
“We’ve become proficient. Now we can talk about being professional.”
The Open Day is this Sunday, June 26 and will run from 11am to 3pm. Helen says it’s an opportunity to see exactly what’s going these days, record your own voice, talk about memories of the station and watch some live crosses across the city.