ArtSound FM, Canberra’s arts and music community radio station, has launched its year of 40th anniversary celebrations and special programming.

At a ceremony in the ArtSound gardens at the station’s home at the Manuka Arts Centre, Canberra, station co-founder and current Board member, Chris Deacon reflected on the stations 17-year campaign for a permanent license, saying the station founders developed a “…program format aimed at devotees of quality specialist music where there was a distinct void.”

ArtSound estimates it has 40-50,000 listeners each week, and over the past 12 months, alone, has broadcast some 500 guest segments and over 300 hours of live locally recorded concerts.

Particularly relevant during its 40th Anniversary year in 2023 is the enormous collection of local recorded music and oral arts history with volunteers working to create programs from such sub-collections from many hundreds of hours of poetry readings in the ACT, most collected from the 1990s to 2013 by the late Anne Edgeworth.

ArtSound has, in the course of its recording history, provided media training for numerous artists and engineers as well as “radio rookies”.

Among projects to foster young talent, in 2013 ArtSound launched the Fine Music Network Young Virtuoso of the Year (ACT) Competition. Since then, several ACT entrants have taken national honours.

With so many accomplishments, Deacon says, “ArtSound’s role as a key potential driver of productivity in the arts, and a genuine discovery channel of arts and music, needs to be acknowledged more widely.”

ArtSound is heard at 92.7 & 90.3FM in the Canberra region, and via DAB+ radio, and online at www.artsound.fm