News
Barbed Wireless Radio Launches at HMP Barlinnie
On Friday the 20th of November Barlinnie Officially launched its very own radio station.
Friday saw the culmination of months of hard work from Communications Hub Staff Barry Richardson, Ewan Grant and New College Lanarkshire Lecturer Monica Brown. The project has been running now for a while with prisoners learning all aspects of creating and producing radio programmes.
The station has been set up not only as an education class but to pass as much information to as many prisoners as possible. Letting them know what’s going on around the establishment and what is available to them through education, courses, visits, addictions, health issues and much more.
The new name of the station, Barbed Wireless, was announced by Deputy Governor Rachel McCrae on behalf of Governor Ian Whitehead who had earlier chosen the winner from a list of over 200 entries by prisoners.
Ex-Footballers Joe Miller and Billy Stark, Comedians Patrick Rolink and Gary Little, Singer Songwriter JJ Gilmour, Owner of the Clutha Bar in Glasgow Alan Crossan as well as MP Phil Boswell were invited along on the day to help with the launch.
The guests were kind enough to present a number of certificates awarded to the radio station and individual prisoners in recognition from the KOESTLER TRUST. In all, the radio project were awarded 17 certificates for original content produced by the prisoners in the radio project.
Afterwards all the invited guests were interviewed by the team to be used in future programmes.
Later in the afternoon the guests held a Q&A session in the old gym. A wide variety of guests led a wide variety of questions, everything from best goals from the footballers to a debate on world politics.
