Out & About: A Plethora of Guests on #LoveYourCommunity Month and a Shout Out for Support for CRY for Matthew

Love Your Community Month

#LoveYourCommunity has been a weekly theme at RedShift over Valentine's Day for a few years now. This year, as part of our #ListenOnline2018 campaign, we have made a whole month #LoveYourCommunity, as we believe there are hundreds of ways in which we, as a community radio station, can share and promote our superb community here in South Cheshire.

Already this month we have interviewed artists, performers, faith groups, charities, a chef, a food blogger, a pre-school, a hula-hoop instructor and a singer. We have also interviewed the Mayor of Cheshire East, Cllr Arthur Moran; the ex-Mayor of Nantwich and now Chairman of the Food Festival, Christine Farrall; the High Sheriff of Cheshire, Sarah Callander Beckett; the owner of Nantwich Bookshop & Coffee Shop, Steve Lawson; Michelle Shipman, owner of Offbeat Brewery in Crewe and Mike Lenz from the Crewe Heritage Centre.

Guests due in over the rest of our #LoveYourCommunity month include Camille Renaudon from Hibberts Solicitors, who are one of our longest supporting sponsors of both RedShift and numerous other community organisations; Peter Mascarenhas talking about the Primary School Enterprise Challenge; Chris Edwards, Dairy Trainer and new member of the team at the International Cheese Awards and Georgina Lamb, fundraising managhttps://www.mixcloud.com/RedShiftRadio/playlists/fresh/er for the RABI (Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institute).

We are also running a competition each week of February to win a Google Mini speaker so you can listen to RedShift all around your home or office just by saying “Google, play RedShift Radio”. Please visit www.redshiftonline.org/google to enter the very easy competition.

Most of our programmes are made available via our Listen Again service found via our website: www.redshiftonline.org/listenagain. Hopefully this sample of diverse guests will inspire Chronicle readers to tune in and catch some of our community programmes which are all produced and presented by volunteers.

During March we will be hosting a #BigBroadcast month, this means that instead of our live programmes starting at midday and running until 10pm, we are going to be broadcasting live for an additional five hours a day. I will be swapping my night owl habits for early starts to present a daily breakfast show and Steve and Helen will pick up the baton with a daily mid morning and lunchtime show to take up through the day.

If you would like to join me on the breakfast show (or indeed, any other shows), please call 01270 440 750 and we can book you in.

Shows at Crewe Lyceum

Last week I experienced two very different moods when leaving the same venue. On Sunday 3 Feb, I took my mum and fiance Michael-John to Crewe Lyceum Theatre to see Totally Tina, the most superb Tina Turner tribute act (MJ is a big fan!). I have to say, she was brilliant and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and left the theatre on a high and singing our hearts out to Simply The Best.

Two nights later, last Tuesday, the three of us were back at the Lyceum, this time to see Birdsong, an adaptation of the WW1 story by Sebastian Faulks. This was a very powerful play that really hit home the horror of war. Needless to say, we left the theatre in a much quieter and thoughtful state than after Tina Turner!

CRY for Matthew

On Saturday night Michael-John and I ventured over to Oswestry to attend a dinner-dance in aid of CRY for Matthew, a charity that we have supported since our friends Sue & Chris Dewhirst lost their son Matthew to an undetected heart defect five years ago. We had a super evening, and although I fell off my extended “Dry January” wagon and had a few vinos, it was well worth it! I am not sure of the total raised but the raffle alone brought in £600 so that was great.

The charity is looking for corporate sponsors as well as raffle prizes for their Gala Ball to be held on Saturday 10th November at the Chester Grosvenor. If you can help in any way, please visit the website where Sue's contact details can be found.

Radio Stoke's Louise Stones on RedShift Radio

My final mention of the week goes to Louise Stones from BBC Radio Stoke who very kindly made time for our presenter Caroline Taylor-Mullington to interview her about her career in broadcasting. I gate-crashed as I had not visited Radio Stoke before and was overwhelmed with how welcome Louise and her colleagues made us. The interview on Caroline's show, Fresh, will be available very soon via the Listen Again function on our website.

Out & About: The Second Part of Liz's Look Back Over 2017

Big Day Out

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I do hope you had a peaceful and happy one. As I am actually writing this just before Christmas I'm hopeful that I will have had a peaceful and happy one too! While you read this I am probably dragging myself to the gym as the official 16-week countdown to our wedding will have began – yikes!

Skoolszfest

So, leading on from last week's review of 2017 and we are skipping into July with our crazy month. Starting off with the first weekend and I attended not one, but three events with the RedShift RoadShow; Skoolzfest in Nantwich, VolFest in Congleton and the Manchester Bombing fundraiser at Nantwich Town FC.

We celebrated my dear Grandpa's 95th birthday closely followed by my 40th with a super 80s-themed party in our garden which was topped off by the announcement from Michael-John that we had got engaged a couple of days previously. What a whirlwind of loveliness July was! I had so many kind and thoughtful gifts (mostly gin related!) and cards for my birthday and then another flurry of cards for our engagement. I certainly felt very special indeed!

Each July we provide the PA kit for the Aqueduct Marina Open Day, always a lovely family day out. We were also the lucky recipients of a grant from Baker Wynne and Wilson as part of their Community Pledge for our youth activities and I am delighted to say we enjoyed listening to John Baker being interviewed/grilled by Ben and Dan, two of our young presenters. They present Musical Monday which is a fantastic, fun-filled show, broadcast every Monday between 5 pm and 6 pm.  Take a listen to Part 2 of their Christmas Special, featuring John Baker: mixcloud.com/RedShiftRadio/musical-mondays-with-ben-dan-181217.

July of course is Nantwich Show and with Michael-John as the Chairman and me

RedShift Community Garden
at Nantwich Show

organising the RedShift Community Garden on Show day and the Big Day Out (see photo top) which takes place on the Sunday after the show, we are like ships that pass in the night during that month, ensuring that our events are planned and executed to the best of our ability. Thankfully, despite the weather being pretty grotty, both events went ahead but both saw a dip in income as attendance was down.

Richmond Village Dog Show

August involved some more #ClimbKili2017 training, this time all on the flat and involving a few drinks with our 18 mile pub crawl. August also saw the Richmond Village Dog Show, another walk up Snowdon and a rather wet Willaston Social Club fun day in aid of the Royal British Legion. 

My August highlight has to be the launch of our Back to the Future inter-generational project, which saw a group of 13 over 70s and 9 under 20 year olds, all enjoying afternoon tea and a quiz whilst getting to know each other. This project continues in 2018 so please call 01270 440 750 if you would like to join.

The #ClimbKili2017 Team

September was another big month: our much anticipated and trained for walk up Kilimanjaro, the highest free-standing mountain in Africa. 14 walkers departed and thankfully 14 walkers returned having had the experience of a lifetime. Thank you so much to each and every walker who took part to help raise nearly £20,000 which was split between our youth activities at RedShift, the Wingate Centre, CRY for Matthew and the Dementia Care Appeal at Mid Cheshire Hospitals.

October was thankfully fairly quiet allowing me to fully recover from Kilimanjaro whilst November included hosting two firework displays and the Chamber Business Awards and even an attempt at wedding dress shopping.

December is always a lovely month, starting as ever with the Weston Christmas Lights in

aid of the Donna Louise Hospice and our Christmas Community Hub drinks at Residence in Nantwich. The RedShift PA kit was put to good use at the Richmond Village Traditional Christmas Market, the Tatton Yule Yomp and the rescheduled Hope House Santa Dash in Nantwich. Finally, my father-in-law's donkeys Betty and Anne had three trips out to put a smile on the faces of people at the Wingate Centre, St Mary's Church in Nantwich and on Christmas Eve, St Margaret's Church in Wrenbury.

In addition to the myriad events attended on behalf of RedShift, I have also trained 16 new presenters and work experience students, interviewed 43 people on the radio and been to 38 aerobic classes (60 is the target for next year!) ... oh, and I have climbed nearly 6,000 metres to the top of Africa! I think that deserves a large G&T! 

This article appeared in Crewe Chronicle on 27th December 2017.  Please look out for my "Out and About" page each week in the Crewe Chronicle. For more information about any of the items in this article, please email us here at RedShift or call us on 01270 440 750.