Sian Critchley

My Message

My name is Sian Critchley and I have been volunteering at Northern Air Hospital Radio since August 2013.

I was looking to get involved with a volunteer project that was totally different to my day job but that also felt fun and challenging.

I went for an outpatient’s appointment at Salford Royal Hospital (Which I still call Hope Hospital!) and sat in the waiting room wondering if they had a hospital radio station. I did some searching online and found they did... and it was called Northern Air Hospital Radio! I remember enquiring and being met by a warm response by the other volunteers and it all went from there.

I started off by going on the wards to speak to patients and ask them for a song request before going onto join the Wednesday night team to play the requests live on air.

I loved taking requests and chatting to patients, some people don’t have many visitors and hospital can be a lonely place. We always got a wide range of requests and I used to laugh when a patient said “You won’t play my type of music”... that was a challenge and 99% of the time we absolutely will!

Nowadays I present alongside Phil and really love researching ideas for new shows to put together, I enjoy the background research as much as being on air. I’ve grown in confidence speaking down the microphone, especially doing live shows because at first, it’s strange listening to your own voice!

My musical knowledge & tastes have expanded whilst volunteering and I realise you don’t have to subscribe to one genre of music you can just be a fan of all types.

In the future I hope to give more to the station and work with the others to reach even more patients and hopefully offer a little bit of comfort and distraction at a difficult time.

To anyone thinking of getting involved I would say - Go for it, this is a fun way to give something back to the community!