Home Local News Wrightington Hospital Radio secures a National Lottery Community Fund Award

Wrightington Hospital Radio secures a National Lottery Community Fund Award

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  • The National Lottery announced today a new block of grants for its Awards For All
  • Wrightington Hospital Radio received £10,000
  • The grant will fund replacement equipment and additional equipment to be able to take radio out into the community.

Wrightington Hospital Radio is delighted to announce that they have secured a grant of £10,000 from The National Lottery Community Fund. The grant will be used to continue to improve the quality of the service we offer to patients and their families as well as providing an experience for budding presenters which could help them to develop a career in broadcasting.

Wrightington Hospital Radio provides a broadcast service to patients of the Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust and has been doing so since 1973. We provide a range of live programmes, twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week as well as live coverage of all home games for both Wigan Warriors and Wigan Athletic.

We are also involved in wider community activities supporting and promoting healthy lifestyles and health related organisations.

In recent years we have added an on-line internet broadcast of our programmes so that families can share the experience with relatives in hospital. Of course, this service is open to anyone to listen in to.

Diane Herring, the Chair of Hospital Radio said, “We will use the funding to replace ageing equipment and to improve and develop our ability to broadcast quality programming to the patients, their families and friends at the hospitals and units we serve, and also to the wider community.”

“Radio studio equipment is expensive to replace; it is also constantly developing and evolving. Wrightington Hospital Radio is keen to keep up with, and indeed be ahead of, developments. This award from The National Lottery Community Fund will certainly help us to do this.”

Communities and community groups have contacted us to express a desire to promote their activities through live broadcasts. The grant will allow us to obtain the necessary equipment to go out into the community and present live broadcasts from, among other things, events such as Village Fairs, Dementia Cafes and Health Promotion events. One patient told us that she was delighted to hear a recording of her Village Fair, as it made her feel that she was still part of that community while being in hospital.

Kevin Riley, the Secretary of Wrightington Hospital Radio, said “I would like to thank all the National Lottery players and I am pleased that they will be able to see, through this award to us, that they are making a difference to their local community”.

Wrightington Hospital Radio is always looking for new volunteers to further develop our ability to provide a wide range of programme over as much of the week as possible. We are looking for presenters, ward visitors and other supporting members. Anyone interested should contact us by email at wrightingtonhospitalradio@hotmail.com

The National Lottery Community Fund supports the aspirations of people who want to make life better for their communities across the UK. They are responsible for giving out 40% of the money raised by the National Lottery and invest over £650 million a year in projects big and small in health, education, environment and charitable projects.

Since June 2004, The National Lottery Community Fund has made over 200,000 grants and awarded over £9 billion to projects that have benefited millions of people and communities in need, from early years intervention to commemorative travel funding for World War Two veterans.

Last year alone it gave out over half a billion pounds (£508.5 million) of National Lottery funding to community projects across the UK. Over 11,000 projects benefitted from this, enabling people and communities to bring their ideas to life.

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