On Local Matters this week, we have a look behind the scenes of the Ara cosmos. We are crowdfunding this month. Ara needs your support, your donations, and I want to show you what it is we actually do. As you might know, behind our frequencies and in our studios, we have three teams, threenot for profit organisations that work together closely, Radio Ara, Ara City Radio and the youth channel Graffiti. We share the spaces, the studios, the infrastructure, but we are three teams, and each of them has their own rhythm, their own projects. I am going to start this week’s Local Matters with Ara City Radio. You all know our breakfast show and the midmorning show where we get you the news of the day and a smooth start into the new day guiding you through new music and Luxembourg’s cultural scene. Besides that, we are working on a number of community projects and we broadcast community shows, every day between 1 and 2 pm. And today, I want to present you two of those.
Luxembourg is all international, we have residents of 170 nationalities in this country. And on Ara City Radio, we try to give those people a voice and a radio show. Every second Thursday, our volunteers Alex and Monica are on air with their show “Polish my English”. Both came to Luxembourg from Poland and started their show last year. Monica’s and Alex’s show reconnects polish people to their home culture. Once you move to Luxembourg, you may get caught up and included in the local culture here, thus you might lose some of the connection to what’s happening in the cultural scene of your home country. Monica and Alex both used to work in culture and in their show they reestablish these links, presenting new music and chatting.
Polish my English is not only meant for listeners with polish roots. From time to time, Monica and Alex do their show in English and present some polish music and interesting facts about polish culture to non-polish speakers. They will announce the English language shows on our website.
“Polish my English” is one in a dozen community shows we broadcast at Ara City Radio. On Mondays, you hear the Ukrainian community show, every other Wednesday, our airwaves transmit Albanian language, we broadcast in Arabic, Farsi and Russian, and have a biweekly show on African culture.
Every other Thursday, Evangelos takes over our studios, hosting the Greek show “It’s all Greek to me”. In 2019, Evangelos moved from Greece to Luxembourg, he knocked at our studio doors and we are very thankful for this visit. His show “It’s all Greek to me” has brought some of the Greek flair to Luxembourg’s radios, every second Thursday from 1 to 2 pm, Evangelos gets us some Greek music.
With Evangelos’ show and all the other community shows, Ara City Radio tries to strengthen the language and national communities in Luxembourg and give them space. On the other hand, Ara City Radio ties people to what’s happening locally. By providing local news in different languages, we help people stay informed even if they don’t speak the languages of this country.