Community Radio In Wales: New Voices with a Welsh accent

This study provides a snapshot of the community radio sector in Wales, just over ten years since its inception. It does so at a time of economic instability and focuses on issues pertaining to social gain and sustainability. The McLeish (1986) definition of a radio interview as a ‘conversation with an aim’ (McLeish, 1986) is borrowed here, as an analogy with which to explore the ‘conversations’ between the community radio stations of Wales and others. The discursive exchange is found to be multi-tiered; affecting the ways in which the stations articulate with their partner agencies (Howley, 2010) their local communities (Day 2009) and facilitate democratic participation (Hochheimer, 1993; Barlow, 2002).

The non-static nature of societal pressures, re-shaped by changes in government policy, legislative developments and economic circumstances, is noted. It is argued here that such fluidity requires the community radio sector (in this case, in Wales) to react to the influence of society on the ‘conversations’ between the stations and their local communities. It is further suggested that stations need to constantly re-evaluate and re-articulate (Howley, 2010) their connections with others (including each other) in order to sustain the delivery of social gain outputs within their local communities, modifying their strategies for the delivery of sustainable social gain outcomes accordingly.