Radio Lollipop - History

History

Radio Lollipop was founded in 1978 at Queen Mary's Hospital for Children in Surrey, England, at first primarily as a cable wired radio station for the 460 children in the hospital. The station made its first broadcast on 5 May 1979, when the very first Radio Lollipop went on-air.

Following the success of this first station in 1980 the International Year of the Child Committee provided funding to develop Radio Lollipops in other British hospitals.

Over time emphasis shifted from the radio station to volunteers spending time on wards entertaining children in person, by playing games, doing arts and crafts and reading stories. However the "radio", with children's programming and often DJing, remains a central part of the charity. Programming consists of DJ banter with children, interspersed with request songs, and comedy and musical contributions from member hospitals, circulated by CD. In most hospitals the programme is wired to speakers in wards, rather than actually broadcast, however a central studio, with DJs, open to children provides a focal point and base). There is a project underway to carry feed from other hospitals in different time zones throughout the day, via the internet. Radio Lollipop is run entirely by unpaid volunteers, (usually a mix of city business people, retirees and medical students), and usually operates in the evenings.

In 1985 the first Radio Lollipop outside the UK was started in Perth, Western Australia, at the Princess Margaret Hospital for Children. From these beginnings the organisation has expanded to hospitals in the east coast of Australia, New Zealand and America.,

Radio Lollipop is in one of the largest and most famous specialist children referral hospitals in the world, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, where it provides play services to children in 390 beds on 21 wards. . It broadcasts radio from a former Jubilee Line tube train that was craned into the hospital and converted to house the Radio Lollipop studio. .