ARTS alive will broadcast episode five hundred and fifty on 14 January 2008. The episode, part of the regular summer series, is devoted to an extended interview with veteran Australian sculptor, Tom Bass.
Since the program first went to air in April 1997, ARTS alive had delivered quality arts and culture news and current affairs each week to a nation wide audience on the national Community Radio Network, and via The Aboriginal Program Exchange.
ARTS alive was the first Australian radio program to publish its spoken-word content on the Internet as an E-journal (ISSN 1329-7074)and the program can also be heard on the SBS digital radio service.
Over the years, ARTS alive has received a nomination in the Walkley Awards for journalism and won the Loud Award, for Best Radio Program in Regular Production, recognition that most of the program's contributors were under twenty-five. In 2004, ARTS alive received a citation from the Centre for Australian Cultural Studies in Canberra, in the Group Category, recongising that the program had made "An Outstanding Contribution to Australian Culture".
'We try to make sure there is something in each episode for the diversity of interests that make up our audience", says Vincent O'Donnell, the program executive producer and co-presenter. 'When the program was created in 1997 by a group of mostly students and post-grads at RMIT University, we said: what radio audience for arts is poorly served by existing programs? And the answer was obvious-outer suburban rural and regional listeners, people without super-specialist knowledge but with wide tastes.
Our audience looks to the arts as a source of entertainment, edification, and social networking... and sometime as a mirror to society or a way to right civil and social wrong. But mostly, the arts are uplifting, even when exploring the darks side of life, so we don't always take ourselves too seriously,' he said.
Over the decade some two hundred students of media studies and journalism, mostly from RMIT University, have contributed to ARTS alive. 'It's terrific looking around to see how many of those student are now in important roles in the print and electronic media', Vincent O'Donnell said, 'a prime time news reader in Perth, parliamentary and political reporters in Melbourne, several rural reporters and an ABC breakfast presenter on regional radio and many in print media, from hard news and investigative reporters to those working in the froth and bubble of street papers like MX', it's a great alumni.'
Vincent O'Donnell helped start the program in 1997 when a mature-aged post-graduate student in the School of Applied Communication at RMIT. He graduated in 2006 with both a Masters degree and a Doctorate. 'I was tagged executive producer by Fiona Parker, now ABC breakfast presenter in Western Victoria, because she wanted to put producer on her business card. Her drive and initiative is typical of the qualities the program fosters in it's contributors, and the real-world broadcasting credits helps their CVs stand out in the highly competitive media job market', Dr O'Donnell said.
RMIT is continuing its support for ARTS alive in 2008, but the program has declined to seek support from the Community Broadcasting Foundation that assisted its production with small cash grants in previous years. 'I feel it's a bit like Les Murray and the Australia Council: the CBF won't fund the program like its other news and current affairs programs so its time to look else where', Dr O'Donnell, said. The community radio sector has huge potential, especially now that rural and regional commercial stations have almost completely lost their local character. The opportunity for community radio to deliver quality local and national news and current affairs both in the arts and more broadly has never been greater an ARTS alive plans to be one program making both a local and national contribution to that'.
