Getting involved: Getting involved

How can I get involved?

Chapel FM Arts Centre is all about getting people involved.

Have a look at Education and Training pages to see the range of courses and training that we offer. Some of the courses are specifically for young people; for older people; or sometimes we do some work specifically with people with disabilities. But generally there are always a range of options for anyone!

Then just get in touch. Usually there is a booking form on the page for any of the courses you are interested in.

Or if you are not exactly sure what you want to get involved with that’s fine too. Send us an email to info@chapelfm.co.uk or call us on 0113 22 55 944 or pop in to see us and have a chat. There are various ways that you can just come along and try things out, on our Find Your Frequency course, one of our Open Days or just coming along to one of our volunteer meetings, broadcast or tech groups.

What FM frequency are you on?

Well we are not at the moment. Over the years we have run time-limited ‘Restricted Service Licences’ when we have broadcast on FM for short periods of a week or two at a time. But generally we have been using the internet to broadcast.

But…be warned! We have been offered a full-time community radio licence by OFCOM. We are currently considering whether this is an option we want to take up.  Of course we will continue to broadcast through the website as well and archive all our programmes so you can listen again whenever you want.

Fancy coming on board as one of our volunteer broadcasters? Get involved!

When does ELFM broadcast?

At the moment we broadcast every Tuesday and Friday evenings as well as the second and fourth Sundays of the month. We also do three broadcast festivals a year where we are on air continually: the 24-hour musicathon in December; our Writing on Air festival in March and our No Bystanders broadcast festival in August.

But…be warned! We have been awarded a full-time community radio licence by OFCOM so by the end of 2019 we will be broadcasting every day… Fancy coming on board as one of our volunteer broadcasters? Get involved!

Is it really for everyone?

We want people to be able to get involved at Chapel FM, whatever their abilities, background, or experience. There are plenty of experienced professionals who come along to our courses and they work alongside people who have no experience at all. We have people on all our courses who have physical and learning disabilities as well as mental health issues.

We try to be as inclusive as possible, and if you do need extra support, then we are committed to finding simple ways to provide that support.

You can talk to any of the Chapel FM staff, but our Participation Manager, Katy Hayley, has overall responsibility for Learner Support and you can contact her direct on katy@headstogether.org

How much does it cost?

We want people to contribute but we don’t want to put people off coming along or taking part because they can’t afford it.

So we try to make as many of our courses and other opportunities at Chapel FM free, or costing a nominal charge eg our 6-month Next Generation courses for young people cost just £30 (about £1 per session).

Most of our events are on a Pay-What-You-Can basis where we ask the everyone to make a donation depending on how much you can afford.  We will often give you a suggestion of a range of options eg we often say for our Friday night events—£2, £5 or £8, whatever you can afford.

Even our refreshments are Pay-What-You-Can.

From time to time we put on paying gigs or other events when we need to make money to cover the costs of the artists involved. Again we will often have concessionary prices and sometimes special deals for local people ie those who have LS9, 14 or 15 postcodes.

And if you do want to make further donations to support our work, please do!

But what if I’m not interested in radio?

ELFM—our community radio station—is a big part of Chapel FM, but it’s not the only thing we do. Apart from all the events and other performances we put on where you can just come along and join the audience, in the last year we have run courses and activities in theatre, singing, cooking, growing vegetables, sculpture, music, pilates, dance, poetry, film and more. We even have a rounders team that plays on the village green!

And you can always just come along on Thursdays when we have our community cafe between 10 and 4 and have a cuppa and some home-baked cakes.

It’s radio…but so much more!