The Isle of Wight is, in spite of - or possibly as a result of its location - a place bustling with artists, writers, and musicians, in a community with many unique and often surprising facets informed by its geography and sense of displacement from the rest of the UK.

Wolverton Manor, in Shorwell, has long been a centre of cultural activity on the island, accommodating artists and musicians, from its concerts of world-class classical music to the annual Folk & Blues Festival, fostering an atmosphere of creativity that has also seen the births of locally legendary Isle of Wight punk, avant-garde and hip-hop projects.

Wolverton FM, a new community arts radio station based in the grounds of The Manor, celebrates the island's creative heritage and provides a platform for experiment and expression for the Isle of Wight, through DJ radio shows, documentaries, radioplays, sound installations, field recordings, live sessions and talk radio. We aim to bring the best of international underground culture to the Isle of Wight, and bring the work of Isle of Wight artists, activists and writers to the world.

Since launching on October 1st Wolverton FM has featured programmes by artists from the Isle of Wight and all around the world. Regular audio treats include shows on the international songwriting underground by Pete Murphy & David Graham, magical transmissions from Australia from sound-artist Jon Panther,  Isle of Wight Walks with Pauline Stirling, sound-collage and mashed-up mambo from Albuquerque's great collagist The Superfools, USA collage author Tom Comitta's "The Nature Book", Portsmouth's Cantando Female Voice Choir, and a feature on the island's legendary magician David Randini. 

Our station is unusual in that we have a particular focus on radio drama, poetry and hoerspiel. Productions in the last fortnight have included an adaptation of an 1854 Punch & Judy script, Rotterdam's Dr Klangendum Radio failing at Beckett's At That Fall, an Oulipo N+13 version of Shakespeare, experimental durational radioplays made from Youtube comments and Amazon reviews, and a KAOS Pad version of Kurt Schwitter's Ursonate.

We have also been running regular programming using experimental radio techniques to reflect on the history of the Isle of Wight, with ambient-historical radio collages about the poet David Gascoyne, Lewis Carroll's visits to Sandown Beach, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and the community that centred around Julia Margaret Cameron at Dimbola Lodge. Also coming soon is the entirety of the audio recordings of the 2016 full, continuous 12-day, 1445-person reading of the Chilcot Report at Edinburgh Fringe.

Wolverton FM is run by autistic and trans artists, and is developing a large body of programming dedicated to neurodiversity advocacy. The station is home to activist and political content that reflects upon the current socio-economic climate, through an attitude that is inclusive, and is challenging to the status quo.

The project is headed by AVANTHARDCOLLECTIVE, which is comprised of island native Lottie Depresstival Bowater - a classical pianist, accordionist and songwriter, multidisciplinary artist/filmmaker and philosophy nerd. Lottie was part of the winning team of the Edinburgh Festival Panel Prize 2016 for "Iraq out and Loud", and is curator of the long running London avant-garde multidisciplinary arts event "Depresstival Presents". Also running the project is Ergo Phizmiz - an artist, radio playwright, composer and opera maker, who has a long association with the Isle of Wight. Both artists recently collaborated with the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra on their production of R. Strauss' opera "Ariadne auf Naxos", which received Critic's Pick in the New York Times.

Wolverton FM are looking for funds to help with running costs, insurance, data storage, and spreading-the-word. Although we have the basic equipment to run the station, much of it has been professionally used for years and is old and in need of some TLC.

We are setting up a series of regular Radio Clubs around the island in which the public can join in high-quality workshops of experimental approaches to making radio, in collaboration with local artists and visiting practitioners, so consequently need to cover venue costs, marketing and travel-costs for these.

Wolverton FM is also home to a lovely family of analogue synthesisers and electronic music making machines, and we aim to become a centre for the development of new electronic and computer composition.

As shortwave and ham-radio enthusiasts we intend to run a series of workshops in building shortwave radios for island residents. We would like to, within the next year and a half, be able to transmit broadcasts on shortwave. Since shortwave is the original means for broadcasting, and the science and art of radio communication was actually BORN in the west-wight, with the first ever radio experiment being broadcast by Guglieimo Marconi from Alum Bay, naturally, we feel we want to continue the lineage of experimental radio broadcasting.  This basically makes us Marconi and YOU Queen Victoria. How about that? 

Also, in a time when vast swathes of media and art are diluted through restrictions from corporate interests and commodification of absolutely everything, we believe that radio is potentially the last surviving means of broadcasting that is unfiltered and untarnished by the limitations of mainstream communications languages and media industries.  

Radio is the medium in which the imagination has no limits. There is no reason why one scene of your drama should not take place in Bradford and the next scene on the moon: the budget is the same to go to either of these places on radio, making radio a truly democratic medium that, in a time when a large section of people have access to some kind of recording and editing equipment, we should be using to try to reshape our world and reimagine a better one.

Wolverton FM are a not-for-profit Community Interest Company. We are open to all proposals for radio material and collaborations. 

In return for your support we have lots of perks, ranging from badges and stickers, a quarterly fanzine-and-cd compilation of choice cuts of our programming; music releases, artwork, cartooning and original collages; to private gigs, and full audio-productions on subjects of your choosing. 

Listen to Wolverton FM at http://wolvertonfm.hotglue.me

Catch up on a selection of our previous broadcasts at http://www.mixcloud.com/wolvertonfm