News

“It’s almost been five years since I’ve been involved with Impact Arts– it’s crazy how the time flies.

I completed my Creative Pathways course in December, with the East Coast showcase, that you can view here on YouTube – almost 900 people watched it on Facebook! On the programme we also did a socially distanced beach clean at Portobello to clean up all the rubbish!

I am now on a programme with Street League, . A great opportunity that Impact Arts helped me get involved in. Street League is a football organisation. The course started mid-January and they deliver an SQA award in customer service. The first half of the day on the course consists of employability workshops and the second half is all about fitness. They also offer support and advice for anxiety and mental health issues, which is handy too me. I don’t really know if I have said but I have anxiety and I have had it for about eight years now. It’s got slightly worse with the current pandemic and lockdown and but at the end of the day things are going to get better – I think it’s important that I hold onto that little bit of hope.

At least during lockdown its been nice not rushing around to go to appointments, or commitments of any other kind. I‘ve been in town 4 times since the pandemic – the second time was to meet up with SAM Radio in September to record an interview in which Forth One broadcasted a show about SAM Radio in October.

The Scottish Government, Republic Media and Bauer Media Group (Forth One owners) have teamed up to create a one-off Radio Documentary that aired across the Hit Radio Network in Scotland; Tay FM, West FM, Clyde 1, MFR, North-sounds 1, Radio Borders and Forth One. It was a huge once in a lifetime opportunity to broadcast on a major radio network, talking about our experiences with Autism and how SAM Radio has helped us. They wanted to know about our experiences before and after we joined SAM Radio and the barriers that we still face as Autistic People within the community. It’s a good platform to publicise our shows to the radio big wigs…an opportunity like this doesn’t come that often.

We’ve got over 2,000 followers and hopefully, will be able to get a bit more – what really counts though is how influential we are not how big we are; for example, Forth One actually supporting us, so that’s pretty cool! Plus are also working with Amazon to get SAM Radio on the echo. So, now you can say “Alexa; put on SAM Radio”