Roundhay Radio
'THE SOUND OF ROUNDHAY'
Welcome to Roundhay Radio – Roundhay School’s very own radio station, based at the Secondary Campus.
Roundhay Radio started as a project to cover a sporting event on the school site and has grown enormously since its inception. Roundhay Radio originally took place only in the summer term for one live week of the year. The music department would transform into a fully functioning radio studio, with production suites and a reception area.
In 2018, we were lucky to be given our own space in the Mansion building to make radio a more regular fixture in the school calendar. Soon, students and staff were producing content all year round. M12 has become our base, with a state-of-the-art studio set up – some of which was kindly donated by the team at Broadcast Bionics as a sponsor for one of our Young ARIAS prizes.
In May 2019, Roundhay Radio was awarded the ‘Most Innovative Team’ award at the inaugural Young ARIAs, an awards event aimed at radio stations and podcasts created by young people. Matthew Robinson (one of our sixth formers) was also awarded ‘Technical Excellence’ for his contributions.
The success didn’t stop there. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2nd awards event was held via live stream and was rebranded as the Young Audio Awards. 
Roundhay Radio was once again nominated for two awards and came away with ‘Secondary School Station of the Year’ – an incredible recognition of the hard work and dedication of the young people who make Roundhay Radio what it is today.
Navigating the 18 months of COVID wasn’t easy. However, the team stepped up and continued producing content from their homes, including our slightly different live week in July 2020. Most of the presenters, guests and producers were doing their roles from home, with only a couple of people allowed to be in the studio. We were so happy to see everyone back in person for our 2021 live week with the theme Reconnect.
As we look to the future of Roundhay Radio, we have some very exciting plans and opportunities coming up.
KS3 Radio Club – Mr Belle will be running a radio club for Key Stage 3 students to give them an insight into what it means to participate in our station. These sessions will teach them how to create, edit and broadcast content for podcasts and live broadcasts. We hope to find our next executive team hiding among the Key Stage 3 group.
More live shows! – We are very keen to be able to offer more weekly live shows throughout the year. Our vision is to have at least one live lunchtime show and an after-school show. Some of our teams are planning these broadcasts already, and more information will be available soon.
Two live weeks – our live week in July is still a fundamental part of our calendar. However, we would like to expand that and bring a live week at Christmas. Our summer live week aligns with the Love Roundhay festival and is a great way of bringing everyone together. The Christmas live week will be slightly smaller in scale but will bring all your favourite shows back for some festive fun.
We are very excited about the future of Roundhay Radio and cannot wait to see what fantastic content our newest team members can create.
Keep an eye out on Twitter and Instagram for updates: @RoundhayRadio
