Shock Radio at the SRA Conference 2017 featuring two wins at the I Love Student Radio Awards
Wow! What an incredible week we had last week at the Student Radio Association (SRA) Conference hosted at De Monfort University, Leicester.
It's hard to put three days' worth of talks and networking into a few paragraphs, but we'll try our best.
Seven of our student members attended industry talks from the likes of Greg James, James O'Brien, Stephanie Hirst, Steve Lamacq and so many more. We've learnt so much about presenting, putting shows together, audience interaction, news packages, getting into the industry, networking, demo workshops and producing from guests in BBC, Global and other freelancers.
Demo Factor was held on the Wednesday where students got their radio demos played aloud to the whole room and a panel of industry judges. And if the judges didn't like it? *que LOUD BGT buzzer sound*. Yup, they got buzzed off. Brutal.
Shock's Sam Morris and Adam Roberts both entered Demo Factor but sadly didn't get their demos played. However they did benefit from expert feedback from Global's soundcheck the next day.
On the Thursday evening, we won TWO I Love Student Radio awards for Best Training and Most Improved Station. As you can imagine, we're absolutely over the moon with the result. We've worked so hard with the station this year- especially our devoted station manager Sam Morris.
It just shows that Sam's determination and commitment through hosting alumni talks, teaching high school students as part of the MediaFactory and putting on his own Kate Cocker - inspired training sessions for members really pulled off for us to bag the Best Training Award. Sam, you really are the man.
And if one award wasn't enough, we only went and won Most Improved Station as well! After the studio move from Old Adelphi to University House last year, Shock lulled a little bit as we were still getting used to our new surroundings and focused a lot of our time on that.
This year, we absolutely smashed our fresher events and put on more SU events including our 15th birthday. We changed our programming to make us sound more like the actual radio by establishing daily breakfast, news and drivetime shows. Oh yeah, and we set up Podcasting and Shock Xtra.
We ended our time in Leicester with a well-earned Nando's and a nap on the train back to Salford.
On the night they also announced the SRA Selector winner. Benedict Jones has been part of the SRA selector for the past few months. Unfortunately he didn't win the opportunity to go to Mexico last night at the awards. But he still did amazingly well to get selected against so many other students. You can listen back to his shows on our Mixcloud.
We're also super proud of our boy Adam Roberts who not only got the role of SRA Regional Officer for North West and North Wales but also went on the big stage at the awards for Blind Date. He managed to get himself a lucky lady and a bottle Lambrini... #goals.
Since our big win, it's made us more determined than ever for us to grab ourselves even more awards at the SRA Awards in London later on this year. The majority of our members are lucky enough to learn from leading-industry experts if they do media-related courses at our MediaCity campus. So no wonder Shock is full of so many talented and wonderful radio presenters, producers and journalists; it's only right that we show off our students' skills and put Salford back on the map.
If you're a Shock Radio member, we definitely recommend you to go to the conference next year. If you don't feel like that's for you, then we're really encouraging people to submit their application to the SRA Awards and attend the ceremony in London later this year.
We had a mixture of committee and members attend the conference including Sam Morris (Station Manager), Rachel Williams (Secretary), Adam Roberts (next year's Station Manager), Benedict Jones (Head of Content), Tom Hinkley (Head of Music), Sophia Chan (Treasurer), Megan Hornsby (presenter, producer and future Treasurer), and Eleanor Haigh (Breakfast presenter).
