How community broadcasters have found their festival feet - 8CCC

8CCC in Alice Springs is a new entrant to the festival space and will launch its One Frequency Festival this year on 17 – 18 June. The station is no stranger to live music events though, having created a social enterprise based around event production with live music as a focus. 

With 12 casual staff developing their skills in audio-visual production it has become a key provider for live music events in public spaces. Station Manager Benjamin Erin said that this has helped create a pipeline for artists to connect with community radio. 

“The beauty of that being that we’re often running the stages that local musicians are playing on, and then they get to see and know the station and they’ll be on the next week for an interview.”  

Mr Erin said the journey to launching One Frequency begun in 2017, both when he joined the station and when 8CCC launched an event called Transmission. The free event saw over 600 people attend, with more than 40 signing up to become members and many more buying merchandise, which helped to fund the station’s replacement of a much-needed mixing desk.

Transmission would be the seed for the two-day format planned for One Frequency Festival. A core part of that format - keeping admission free for attendees while paying performers and those working behind the scenes - is a goal for One Frequency, which has been helped greatly by funding from Live Music Australia. 

The event’s name is a reference to the station’s vision of ‘Many Voices One Frequency’, and Mr Erin says that living up to that vision will be the benchmark for success for the festival.  

“That statement is core to how we operate in our on-air activities, in that we want to be inclusive and representative and have a diversity of voices on our platform.”  

Ensuring that First Nations people are included is a key part of doing so, with artists and technicians from remote communities to be involved alongside locals. 

This will be key in helping to show a more positive side to Alice Springs as a region, which Mr Erin says been treated like a political football and suffers from a public perception that doesn’t match locals’ lived experience of a vibrant, dynamic and healthy community.