A Doncaster radio station is recording shows with teens and encouraging the expansion of hyperlocal arts

DN12 is a radio station based in Conisbrough and Denaby who will be collaborating with the musical community group Breaking Beats on a project to get more young people involved in Doncaster radio.

Ian Byatt, Director at Breaking Beats, said: “We have been working with the disengaged and disenfranchised youth in Doncaster for six years now.

“We focus on areas such as Hyde Park and Hexthorpe where the attitude of the youth is really negative.”

Ian alongside Aaron Jack, who is a music producer at Breaking Beats has reached out to teens and got them involved with hip hop music.

Ian said: “We’ve met some great kids through the project and we teach them how to use our industry-standard equipment and show them all sorts of techniques.”

During the lockdown, the DN12 station found itself with a dilemma.

They were gathering lots of new volunteers but none of them were young and they wanted to change that so they reached out to Ian to see if they could collaborate.

Together they have come up with the idea to have six seperate hour long radio shows planned, recorded, and edited by young people from the Doncaster community.

“We have recorded the first two shows already with a young man from Mexborough who is passionate about theatre,” Ian said.

“He played a selection of modern musical songs and shared his experiences during the lockdown.”

One of the next young people to take part in the project is Mcauley Kelsall, a 16-year-old boxer from Denaby.

Ian is hopeful that this injection of youth will attract new listeners to the DN12 radio station especially with the recent closure of Trax FM.

He said: “Radio is a powerful medium and it’s great to see the hyper-local station DN12 grow at such a fast rate.

“It’s a station that people can identify with and see themselves in which is not always true of the bigger stations.”

The collaboration is being funded by the Birdsong Project run by Doncaster Creates.

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