When discussing UFV and the Fraser Valley, one complaint often brought up is our apparently lacking culture and sense of community; an absence of relevant, engaging events and activities. City-run events often have a broad stroke audience and can lack the passion and energy that is brought in when a subculture hosts for their unique group.
In the local music scene, you could say UFV’s on-campus radio station CIVL has a prominent voice in the community, but that would be an enormous understatement. If you’ve been to a show with local artists in the Fraser Valley, CIVL probably had a hand in it.
CIVL hosts many grassroot bands both local and from out of town at the infamous Carport Manor that is, yes, literally a carport. They are involved with the Mission Folk Festival, Fraser Valley Pride Celebration, and the Abbotsford Arts Council, not to mention they host the annual Fraser Valley Music Awards.
Community radio stations have a unique niche on the airway. CIVL is run almost entirely by community members and UFV volunteers, creating weekly radio programming and hosting events across the Fraser Valley. Its mandate is to provide content relevant to the community in ways that mainstream radio, being funded primarily by advertisement instead of by the community, cannot.
This focus allows them to showcase local talent in a way that would not be financially sustainable for other radio stations. Perhaps it’s unsurprising local favourites appear with frequency in all of CIVL’s top tunes charts, and even with CIVL’s mandate to include 35 per cent Canadian content, the charts are filled with maple leaves.
Providing a platform for local talent to perform and showcase their work is an aspect of community building that can be left to the wayside in city development, and surely has been in Abbotsford and Chilliwack. CIVL has only been on air since 2006 but has established itself as an integral aspect of the music community, providing voices and platforms for artists to establish themselves within the community.
CIVL was originally approved to broadcast in 2006 on 88.5 FM from McKee Peak in Abbotsford. Their signal was later switched to 101.7 FM, which started running at full strength in 2012.
As a testament to the hard work and dedication of those at the radio station, CIVL has recently been approved to run a second transmitter, allowing it to broadcast in Chilliwack. The project took six years of hard work and research, and will cost the station hundreds of thousands of dollars, which the station has been saving up for since its inception in 2003.
As CIVL begins to branch out into a new but not unfamiliar area, it’s important to recognize the value a community-based, community-funded radio station can bring to developing the unique identity of an area. Although the station already runs programming relevant to Chilliwack, as the stations begins broadcasting, involvement from the community will help further evolve the station’s identity to incorporate Chilliwack’s local musical and commentary needs, and vice versa.
Image: David Myles/The Cascade
