Harrogate Community Radio's logomark - it says HCR

Manifesto

A manifesto for Harrogate Community Radio, after Marinetti and Masnata, October 1933... but, with a clean break from the politics.
Written by Thomas Rabies.

Never-o'clock, and the dial already dialling itself. Broadcasting since two-thousand-and-nineteen, though the town's had a hum going a fair sight longer than that - we only found the technology to carry it. Herewith, then, Marinetti-wise, Masnata-wise, though our ether stretches global and back:

  1. Harrogate-connected and Harrogate-hearted, you may have the mic. Radical hospitality, the trustees might call it in the minutes. No card at this door is what it means walking in - confetti or not confessor, the broadcast thrown like blossom near the Empress roundabout, at the pram, the pensioner, the wrong'un, evenhanded.
  2. That connection's a door-policy, not a playlist-policy. Get past the door, and your own Tuesday decides the rest.
  3. Broadcast whatsoever wants broadcasting - whatever's asking to be said - so it breaks no law and no licence. Near enough the whole catechism, and short enough to fit on one line.
  4. Nobody's waged for this, presenter nor trustee, and that's no oversight, it's the constitution's own clause. Unwaged is how a Thursday tells itself apart from a shift.
  5. No adverts, none, not a jingle's worth. Not-for-sale, and neither's the air, and we'll say it thrice if the Commission wants it in triplicate.
  6. No central playlist, and the trustees are forbidden, forbidden, from housing one. Your hour, your fader, your own uncarded hum, aired unhouse-styled.
  7. Every genre going, aye, but static besides, and silence held like a held breath, and field-recorded rain off Bower Road, played up same as a ninety-nine to whoever's tuned in. The connection was never in the noise. Only in the hand that faders it.
  8. Radia-networked, ether-twinned to stations we'll never duck-door through in person: what's hummed here goes out to strangers' speakers, and their hum comes back through ours, welcomed the way next door's window-peal of not-English is - gladly.
  9. Left Harrogate a decade since? Does the signal card you? It does not. Unbothereder than the Nidd, it finds you the way water finds its own level, given a fortnight and a fibre connection.
  10. And plain, once, the way the small print never quite manages: have fun. That's the catechism under the catechism.

Never-o'clock, and the dial still dialling -