Blood, Sweat & Volunteers — The Power of FBi Radio

For 15 years now, FBi Radio has brought the very best of Sydney Music, Arts & Culture to Sydney via 94.5FM, and to the world through fbiradio.com

FBi has only a handful of paid staff — with almost all broadcasters, producers, content makers, front liners, and event staff being volunteers. It is incredible to see an organisation inspire it’s community to not only support each month with money, but also with many hours of their time.

To celebrate this birthday milestone, we held a three stage festival fundraiser, FBi Turns 15, last weekend at Manning Bar. Run almost entirely by volunteers.

A few thousand people joined the party, with musicians including Cloud Control, Sampa The Great, Tropical Fk Storm, Kwame, CC:Disco! and Body Type. Visual artists such as Nadia Hernandez, Louise Zhang, and Sophie P-Y created installations across the venue. The crowd was a diverse community of music & arts lovers, with an incredibly fun vibe.

FBi has always been a breeding ground of future talent — many of Australia’s biggest musical success stories got their first airplay on the station. But did you know that many presenters on Australian radio and television today got their start at FBi, as volunteers? Many of the heads of major cultural and arts organisations around the country are also ex-FBi volunteers. The FBi volunteers are the heroes of the station.

I imagine there are very few media organisations who would be able to run on volunteer power in the same way that FBi Radio does, and still have those volunteers thank you at the end of their shift, and tell you how lucky they feel to just be involved in the organisation’s vision.

I, too, started as an FBi Radio volunteer back in 2003 — before the station began broadcasting full time. I remember spending hours organising the CD library, before managing student marketing campaigns, and then being asked to produce Sunset — a strip of electronic music shows with presenters which included Kid Kenobi, Mark Dynamix, Jonathan Wall, Ben Korbel, Declan Lee, Deepchild, Funktust, Simon Caldwell, and Ajax. All the while I was balancing university study, and bar work to pay the bills. But the connections that I made as a volunteer at FBi were vital in leading me to where I am today — and the time I gave FBi “for free” has proved to be of more worth than almost anything else I have done.

So, to everyone who gave FBi your blood, sweat, and volunteer hours on the weekend — thank you. As the current Vice President of the Board of FBi Radio (an elected voluntary position), I also thank you for helping ensure that FBi can continue to promote Sydney’s Music, Arts & Culture. And I encourage anyone who has ever considered volunteering in community radio to do it — I promise you that it will give back way more than what you put in.

Photo credits: Tim Da-Rin www.timdarin.com