Picture: Gen Ward
Show: Mind Ya Head, Wednesdays 9-10am
I was a regular guest on a couple of shows in 2017-2018 which taught me the ropes of running the panel and feeling confident presenting on air.
In my professional life, I’m a career coach and I do some freelance admin and bookkeeping. I also am in a couple of ukelele bands where we love performing at open mic.
For the last three years I’ve been hosting Mind Ya Head. I love getting behind the mic and sharing resources on mental health and wellbeing as well as choosing each week’s playlist for the show. I love it when people text in and play along with the music quiz or guess the riff. When I meet new people they will sometimes say that they listen to my show and that gives me a buzz!
I have met with many local people through conducting interviews on the topic of mental health and people are always glad to share their own story or information if they work in this field. I’m continuously learning about these topics too, plus I really enjoy editing interviews so they sound ‘just right’ in getting the message out there which may resonate with the MainFM listeners.
I love how Sam Loy has created ‘a month’ of different ways in how he presents his weekly show. It’s called The Thursday Morning Show and he describes it as ‘a variety show. 1 timeslot, 3 different shows on a 4-week cycle.’ Where he keeps his original format with All Songs Lead to Tom (love it!) and Someone You Know – which is a recorded interview with someone local and edited and presented documentary style, with songs (or parts of songs) interspersed throughout.
Community radio for me is all about inclusion. I think there’s a good cross-section of presenters on the grid, plus we have different skill levels, with new people starting and long-term presenters…so I’m always mindful of making people feel welcome and offering support and help people feel part of the mainFM community.
When I was on air a year or so ago, the building I was in rocked and it was in fact an earthquake. A song was playing at the time, so I didn’t ‘interrupt the song with an important announcement’ but I had a live guest so we kind of had this shared moment of ‘did you feel that?’ ha ha. Then I was able to look it up and announce live that ‘yes, that was an earthquake we just felt!’
I upload my weekly show onto Mixcloud, especially if there has been a guest. I typically put a profile picture of my guest into a template with the red and blue colours of Mind Ya Head branding, then post the link on the Mind Ya Head Facebook page. I also announce on Facebook that the show is coming up on Facebook with the guest and topic and share this to Friends of MainFM for people in that group to see.
Presenting my show each week is such a joy. I’m up to 134 shows now and looking to keep going as long as I can.
Thanks for sharing, Gen! Great work with your show branding and Mixcloud uploads!