The new laptops purchased with support from the Alumni Annual Fund

Student radio station increases their activities due to laptops purchased with Alumni Annual Fund support

Thousands of alumni and supporters of the University of Exeter help current students through generous donations to the Alumni Annual Fund, by giving gifts of time or money in order to enhance the student experience.

The Alumni Annual Fund supports projects that demonstrate that they will enhance the experience across the wider student community, benefitting current and future generations and making Exeter an even better place to live and study.

A wide range of projects are supported every year which includes students societies such as Radio Falmouth (Surf Radio) at The Falmouth & Exeter Students’ Union who in the 2019-20 round received funding to support their 24/7 broadcasting station.

Members of the society can host their own radio show, also have membership of the Student Radio Association (SRA), and have access to the industry standard "Soundhouse" radio studio, as well as their own recording sessions in Penryn.

Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Surf Radio’s activities have taken a lot longer to arrange and run, however they have used some of the grant received from the Annual Fund to purchase laptops for the project which have been incredibly useful to increase the activities they can run and reach they have.

Deputy Station Manager and Alumni Annual Fund project lead, Jack Wilkins, let us know that they have been able to use the laptops purchase to download their music and programmes on to them in order to complete a studio set up in the SU to increase their studio time.

The laptops have also allowed them to carry out outside broadcasts which they ran successfully throughout Fresher week in September 2020 where they livestreamed all of the limited capacity events to student members which were hugely successful. The laptops have enabled their members to host and produce shows, which would have been difficult due to reduced studio capacity and has invaluably allowed the society to increase studio capacity and time for their members for the future.

Jack said that the whole Surf Radio team and members would like to “thank the alumni and supporters who have donated to the Alumni Annual Fund for their generous support which has enabled them to enhance what Surf Radio can offer to its community, and achieve going forwards in the challenging circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic.”

You can find out more on their social media pages and check out Surf Radio’s schedule and tune in via their website: https://surfradiofal.wordpress.com/

Date: 11 November 2020