Art Month: A Day in the Life of Lucie

Art Month is a pretty broad category so this month we've tried to bring you as many forms of art as possible. And my personal favourite is interactive art. The biggest form of interactive art, in my opinion, is the radio because the presenters are literally putting on a show for you and there are tons of different ways to interact with that show. So we asked Lucie to give us a bit of insight into a day on her radio show.

I’ve been interested in the radio industry for many years, Radio 1 DJs such as Zane Lowe, Huw Stephens and Greg James (who I listened to religiously at one point) moulded 14 year old Lucy's music taste and made me love it so much I began considering it as a career. I’m now in my last year of college and planning to study Journalism at University, I'm still quite unsure about what I want to do, but I thought I would give this radio thing a shot.

After about a year of trying to find experience, I stumbled across the community station Salford City Radio. Which conveniently is based 5 minutes from my house (by car) I'm not that stupid, to have ignored something so close to where I live! I’ve been at Salford City Radio since June 2012, they trained me up and gave me the creative freedom I didn’t think I’d get so early in the industry.

Starting college, I was shoved in a Media class with nobody I knew except for a lad that slept through every lesson. I ended up sitting next to a girl called Beth and found out that she was also interested in Radio - I was mega shocked as I’d never met anyone who had this similar interest to me. So, I invited her to help me present the radio show.

Since January 2013, Beth and I have been presenting a weekly radio show that goes out Thursdays 8-9pm on 94.4fm as well as online. We both present and produce, most of the time I create the playlist as Beth does have rather odd music taste ranging from One Direction, to Blink 182. We create new segments for the show and plan interviews.

Lots of opportunities have come our way since starting the show, we were recently invited to report on Birmingham International Fashion Week where we interviewed designers, watched fashion shows and drank lots of champagne. We also had District 3 come into the studio for an interview last summer (that boy band from last series' X Factor, not Union J. The other one!) They were lovely and seemed quite shocked that they were being interviewed by 17 year old girls.

We hope to start a live show over the summer, but at the moment due to college restricting our time, we pre-record the show on a Friday afternoon. We probably should prepare the show in advance, and every week we say we’re going to. But most shows we walk in clueless of what’s going to happen, we like it that way. Most shows include new music that we’ve loved recently, reviews of each other’s song choices and general chit chat.

Controlling the desk in a radio studio is easy; there are a few knobs to fiddle about with when first going into the studio. These change the level of your voice and the sensitivity of the mics, songs, CDs and Jingles. This is probably the most tedious job of them all, but if you don’t do it your show won’t sound comfortable to listen to, the audio will be all over the place. The rest is simple. You play music, you chat and make up little games to make the show as interactive as possible.

If you’re interested in the radio industry, use the internet. Google how to get experience, it’s out there. Whether its hospital radio, a community station or internet radio shows. If you have any questions, tweet me at @lucyrebeccca and I’ll try to use my limited knowledge to help!

Listen to the show - Thursdays 8-9pm 94.4pm (in Salford)