Allan On’t Wireless

The success of Harrogate Community Radio seems intertwined with the progress of Creao Studio. Indeed, it was at Creao Studio that Allan, Andrew & Scooby had the idea for the station. It is an unofficial place of meeting for the guerrilla group of presenters. Although firmly in the community and recording off their own bat, Creao is a safe port in the times of broadcasting crisis.

There is a show on Harrogate Community Radio, called Open Aspect, that tells the stories of local people. Hosted by Karen Thornton (above), the spoken word show proves quite popular with listeners, whatever demographic they represent.

As the host, Karen, says:

At university I studied librarianship, and as a librarian my exposure to stories moved from the pages of novels to the lives of people in the community who came into the library. After a few years I retrained, almost by accident, in the world of ‘business change’ which led me into user research. I found my passion; a place where it was my job to hear and understand people’s perspectives and stories to help improve the services they used.

Listening to stories of tragedy led me to start fundraising for Doctors Without Borders. Stories of tradition, culture and creativity inspire me to dance with my troupe, Houriat.

Open Aspect is about people, their perspectives and their passions.

This month, the Open Aspect interview is with Allan Smyth, the owner of Creao Studio. Although a young studio in the term of things, Allan has been working in Audio for close to forty years and he is a veteran of the local music scene. Here, listen to the interview:

If you have received anything from listening to this interview then please leave a comment in the footer of this post. If you want to have your story shared with the community, then drop the station an email at info@harrogatecommunityradio.online – they can put you in touch with the host of the show that you hope to contact. You never know, you may be sat in Creao Studio in-front of a microphone telling your side of things.

Allan’s interview was completely spontaneous – he did not want to know what questions he was going to be asked. It is a good thing for the radio, the studio and the individual parties that this gets out there. The interest in interviewing Allan was that Karen wanted to feature a long-running business and it’s owner, to see the trials and errors they faced and, in doing so, help others avoid the pitfalls. Thanks for listening.