A GROUP OF schoolchildren are among the recipients of almost €800,000 in funding to make radio programmes.

Primary and secondary school students will get to create their own mini radio station on Dublin South FM with the help of a €20,000 grant from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI).

The BAI announced that it had awarded €796,000 in grants to help 96 radio projects get off the ground. Thirty different radio stations, national and regional, will host the programmes. A total of 262 applications were received in this round of the Sound and Vision scheme – if the BAI had agreed to fund each of those, the cost would have come to €3.3m.

Of the €796,ooo awarded in funding, €16,000 will go to Irish-language programming, €77,500 to bilingual (Irish/English) programming and €702,900 to English-only programmes.

Documentaries, arts and culture, heritage, social and drama programmes have all gotten the nod for funding. The successful applicants who will receive grants from the BAI include:

• A bilingual documentary about the Titanic (the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the ship is next year);
• A portrait of poet Jinx Lennon;
• A children’s programme called Meet the Grandparents;
• The story of a church in Tipperary Town called St Michael’s: The Church With the Slumpy Spire.

For the full list, see the BAI’s Sound and Vision scheme>

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