Student Radio Association

In 2007, we began a club night – ClubFoot – with a policy of introducing new and exciting DJs to Nottingham, and offering a cheap night out for students away from the ‘cheese’ offerings. After a year of running popular nights all over Nottingham, and being involved at URN as daytime presenters, Radio ClubFoot was the logical progression.

The show offered in-depth news and interviews and with an up-front new dance music policy it delivered students with a pre-party rave from 9-11pm every Thursday. Regular features: What’s On? – which informed listeners of the biggest and best music events in Nottingham in the coming week with tracks by the DJs/artists in question; ClubFoot Recommends – where we each played our favourite new track of the week; and The Takeover. The latter was the centrepiece of the show: each week we would offer a different Nottingham club-night or label the opportunity to provide us with a 30-minute mix to showcase and promote themselves, and on a larger scale highlight the thriving music scene in Nottingham to students and ‘outsiders’.

In the spring we launched the ‘Radio ClubFoot Bedroom DJ Competition’. This was run in conjunction with the Summer Party – one of the biggest student-run festivals in ¬¬Europe – with the prize to open the ClubFoot vs. MNSTR. We invited any ‘wannabe’ DJ, who had not previously had the chance to ‘play-out’ to send us a mix. We played the entries on our show, extending it to three hours-a-week. We were overwhelmed with entries, throughout the University’s year groups and reflecting many different genres which echoed our music policy and show. 

The winner was MI!F, who made his debut in our tent alongside Pendulum, Filthy Dukes, South Central and the ClubFoot Soundsystem.

We tried to integrate ourselves in the URN After Dark brand, by asking other specialist shows such as Drum’n’Bass, and Mr. E’s Raggae and Dancehall Show to provide us with a track each week to advertise their show and also add to our up-front new dance music policy.

We worked hard to provide fresh and exciting interviews with artists and DJs before they exploded in the commercial charts. We spoke to Little Boots in September 2008 before she signed for a major label, and had a world exclusive interview with Zodiac Cartel, which was seized upon by bloggers and found its way to Beatportal.com – one of the world’s most respected DJ-websites. We also interviewed local acts such as Lippicool and DJ Newmano. 

With two of the team establishing themselves as DJs on the Nottingham scene – ClubFoot Soundsystem – and all enthusiastically passionate about music, all of us were constantly on the hunt for new music. Largely it was sourced from blogs, DJ websites and forums. Each week we were excited to arrive at the studios to listen to what everyone else had and share it with our listeners.

To celebrate the birth of our show, we teamed up with Nottingham night Fresh Out of Death, and helped to put on a launch party with Fools Gold’s Sammy Bananas headlining on October 11th. This helped to market the show from the beginning of the year and contributed to ClubFoot’s ‘multi-platforming’. We also wrote articles for the student newspaper as Radio ClubFoot; had a constantly updating website with track-listings and so on; and our podcast which had downloads from across the globe.

We had a number of specials: Best of British, Grime Show, South Central Live in the studio, and ‘the Mixathon’: a special six-hour show where we presented a host of student DJs who were emerging on the scene to showcase their style and technical skills.