New Youth Radio Talk Show – Backchat
I am now the host of a new youth chat show on Westside Radio 89.6FM (West London) which is aired live on Sundays from 6pm to 8pm.
We truly have an enormous amount of scope with this show and we have plenty of room for people to get involved. I have written up a letter that is being sent out to educational establishments and youth organisations and I thought that it would be a great idea to past it up here so that if you would like get involved in any capacity you can to by simply getting in touch with the Backchat team. You can find a copy of the letter with the contact details below.
I’ve mentioned before about some of the ideas I’ve had and projects I’ve been working e.g. ‘YEP’ (youth empowerment project) and ‘Curriculum Meditation’ and this is a great avenue through which I can take those projects even further. It doesn’t just stop there as radio is such a powerful medium and has the potential to reach large scale audiences. So if you want to be a part of that there are opportunities for you also. The details of how to get in touch are below.
The Radio show is also broadcast online from the station website which is https://www.westsideradio.co.uk so you can tune in from wherever you are. Again this is ideal as it gives us a chance to form collective projects with people from other stations/organisations across the globe and work together to make a difference. There is also a blog on the website which is here – https://www.westsideradio.co.uk/blog/
Letter to educational establishments/youth organisations:
We here at Westside radio 89.6FM would like to tell you about an exciting project that is taking place at the station.
Firstly here is a little bit of information about the station:
Westside Radio is based in Southall and covers the West London area on the FM frequency. The station has the potential coverage of around 1.6million people. Boris Johnson, who is now the Mayor of London, opened the station last year and we have many celebrities come to the station on a regular basis like Estelle, Jay Sean, Raghav and other celebs from shows like The Apprentice and Big Brother.
We have re-launched a show called ‘Backchat’ which is a show for young people aged between 14 – 19yrs; it is aired on Sunday evenings from 6 – 8pm. The Backchat show itself is an avenue through which various topics can be discussed and debated. We have a whole team of young people involved with the show and we have room for plenty more. The ‘Backchat’ show is also a wonderful portal through which young people can have their say and even effect change on an enormous variety of issues including education, sexual health, politics, community issues, gun and knife crime, tackling gang culture, music and a host of other issues that affect all of us as a whole. In addition to that we’ll be holding some wonderful competitions that will give some terrific exposure to the youth and their ideas.
The host of the Show is Amit Sodha who is also a Life Coach. Amit also worked with young people in various organisations and capacities across North West London and has also presented various shows at the station. Amit is an active volunteer among youth projects and also works with disabled children.
Ewan Willmott works for Ealing council and is the Backchat producer. He searches and applies for funding for BackChat. Ewan also organises the volunteer presenters, topics, source interviews, competition merchandise and develops programme ideas. He also searches for new recruits to the volunteer presenter’s pool.
The show has amazing potential and although ideas are flowing in about how we could utilise the show we need to increase its exposure and get more young people involved and truly getting to the core of the issues that are affecting them the most. The great thing is that if your school/college/youth organisations and students are working on any exciting community projects we can also get them exposure through the show, which will give them even greater recognition for the work they are doing.
To begin with we would like to offer to you send some of the backchat team along and talk to the young people more about what they do. The team will come along and share what it is that they do and invite those who want to get involved to do so.
The great thing for those who want to become involved with the show is that it will give them a huge dose of experience about working in the media and will also give them something to put onto their c.v.
You can get in touch with the backchat team by emailing them on backchat(at)westsideradio(dot)co(dot)uk
You can also get in touch directly with Amit by clicking here.
We look forward to hearing from you.
The Backchat Team – Westside Radio 89.6FM. The new sound of West London.
I checked out the radio station website. It’s cool. And I was glad to see that you are still on the air . . . more than two years after you posted this. Keep up the good (and vitally important) work.
Thank you John and thanks for all your kind comments.
This is great. Keep up the work.
I’m a Nigerian and a youth corper under the national scheme for graduates of higer education to serve the country for a year, in a state different from theirs.
During the year,you can initiate a Community Development Service to help improve the community you serve. I had several ideas before getting here that revolved around children and young adults but the enviroment does not really provide the platform. And creating the platform would be too demanding financially. I was looking for ways to modify it,and i found this. I am going to borrow a leaf from this and build my vague ideas into something concrete. The children and young people have a voice,they just need a platform! Weldone again.