Grampian Hospital Radio

6 August 2007

Radio Rainbow celebrated 15 years of broadcasting to the Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital with a special day of broadcasting on Monday 6th August.

We broadcast all day on the day, starting from 6am, with Northsound 1's Greigsy and Pete broadcasting their breakfast show live from our studio until 10am. They also visited the wards to speak to the children and staff, and towards the end of their show, they helped to cut our birthday cake.

After 10am, we continued to broadcast our own shows on Radio Rainbow until 9pm.

Throughout the day, patients and staff came down to visit our studio or phoned us to take part in the fun, wish us a happy birthday and request their favourite songs. Our visitors included Gail Thomson (Service Manager), Angela Horsely (Senior Nurse of the Royal Aberdeen Children's Hospital) and Professor George Youngson (Consultant Paediatric Surgeon).

Our team of volunteers also visited the wards throughout the day, speaking to the patients and staff and getting their requests.

In the afternoon, we interviewed Paul Harper, one of our former members who now presents at Real Radio in Glasgow. Aberdeen Football Club mascot Angus the Bull joined us as a guest, and he visited the wards to meet the patients and staff.

We had also been running a competition with the hospitals play department, where children could draw a birthday card for Radio Rainbow. We had entries from all of the wards and the Lowit unit, with first, second and third prizes for the two age categories. We judged this competition during the afternoon.

Throughout the day, we had "guess the year" competitions, where three songs from a particular year where played and clues given out during each of our shows. Listeners where encouraged to guess which years the songs where from.

Towards the end of the day, all requests from the day where gathered together into a box, and we held a prize draw. We picked out first, second and third prize winners from the box of request forms. As well as these prizes, we also picked out a request for the nurses in the Surgical ward, who won a box of chocolates.

11 February 2007

At our annual general meeting on the 11th February, long service certificates where presented to Graham Stephen (25 years), George Milne (25 years), Jennifer Shand (10 years), Brenda Massie (10 years) and Jim Fletcher (5 years).

Certificates where also presented to Adrian Field (10 years), Julie Watt (5 years), Norman McLean (5 years) and Richard Preston (5 years), who where all unable to attend this year’s AGM.

28 October 2006

Deputy Health Minister and MSP for Aberdeen Central Lewis MacDonald paid a visit to Grampian Hospital Radio on Saturday 28th October as part of this year’s Community Service Volunteering Make a Difference Day.

CSV Make a Difference Day is the UK's largest day of volunteering. Over 115,000 people did something amazing on Saturday 28 October 2006 by taking some time out to make a difference.

Volunteering is a fantastic experience - a great way to give something back to your community, have fun, get skilled and meet new people. The main day was Saturday 28 October, however the campaign runs from 21 October - 4 November.

Mr Macdonald was at Grampian Hospital Radio on Saturday 28th October from 10.15am to 11.30am and was impressed to hear that Grampian Hospital Radio has about 70 volunteers from all age groups and broadcasts 24 hours a day 7 days a week from studios based in Ashgrove House.

He also acknowledged that “volunteer members” of Grampian Hospital Radio get a great experience and feeling of giving something back to the Community. He heard that we welcome new members through offering an initial 3 month probationary period where the volunteers get a real feel of the function and role of Grampian Hospital Radio.