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DukeBox, the radio station of the Wellington family of schools, continues to extend its reach and influence. With a new station about to open in Hangzhou, and the Master’s Voice now being shared via podcasts, DukeBox is fast becoming a key factor in uniting our community – on a local and global level. Listener figures reached 3,500 last academic year and the plan is to increase these, tenfold, by September 2019.
The story of DukeBox is a story of creative vision and ambition but, above all, it is a story of community collaboration. The Wellington Academy in Wiltshire and Wellington College in Berkshire share a station; there is now a student team in Wellington College Tianjin, which will forge close links with Wellington College Hangzhou. Later this year, work will be completed on the DukeBox station in Hangzhou, creating a new hub for DukeBox China.
Polly Gutteridge, Co-Founder of DukeBox Radio, in highlighting the importance of DukeBox to the Wellington Community, said: ‘DukeBox gives us the opportunity to unite our geographically disparate schools, and it offers a creative outlet for our students whatever their age and wherever their home.’
DukeBox currently broadcasts around 70 hours of original programming each week, plus a whole range of podcasts. The programming is innovative; the topics are wide-ranging. The Academy Remembrance Day service on 9th November will be covered live and presented by a Year 9 student; academic revision podcasts – ranging from ‘In Our Wellingtime’ for History to the light-hearted Chemistry Q&A – prove very popular each summer; pastoral talks for parents are recorded so that parents in our family of schools can listen to the same talks as parents at Wellington Crowthorne; and ‘Welly Music’ plays our student-produced music from singer-songwriters to the Symphony Orchestra.
The Modern Foreign Languages Department offers a global perspective: the Mandarin bilingual show goes out live from the College every Wednesday evening; ‘La Playlist’ plays music in French, Spanish, German, Italian and Chinese for an hour each evening; MFL FM (broadcasts and podcasts) cover everything from Scandinavian music (if you’ve never heard Abba’s Waterloo sung in Swedish this is your chance) to our Spanish festivals guide.
In short, DukeBox covers all the small things and the big things that happen within the Wellington Community. From large-scale events like the Jimmy Higham Fun Run, to the snippets that celebrate our College values between shows, DukeBox has it covered.
As the jingle goes: DukeBox is the voice of the Wellington Family.
