Campus Heroes
The Campus Heroes column highlights U of M staff or students and their art or art-related work. If you think someone should be profiled, then send an e-mail to tobanarts@umanitoba.ca
UMFM’s word guru
Jeanne Fronda, Staff
Photo courtesy of Liz Clayton
An interview with Liz Clayton
Liz Clayton knows how to make a connection. That’s why she’s been involved in radio for over 20 years.
“I’m drawn to radio [because] I’m also a reader. I find that the [connection] between books and radio . . . is that they both trigger the imagination,” said Clayton, who is the new spoken word coordinator for UMFM, the U of M’s campus and community radio station. “You read a book, then you see pictures in your mind, and it allows the receivers to create their own imagery. The oral sense [gives] you the ability to get a lot closer [to listeners]. . . . You can go directly to the emotion of the person. It’s a nice way to connect.”
It was music that made Clayton want to plug into radio in the first place. During the late ’70s, when she was a university student at the University of Winnipeg, she planned on becoming a lawyer. But after two years of school she discovered that her real passion was music, so Clayton decided to get involved with campus radio.
“I was drawn to radio by listening to music that wasn’t getting played on the radio,” said Clayton, who got her start in campus radio by volunteering as a host for a late night show. “[When] I was younger and going through record collections, I just learned that there’s a whole universe that isn’t being covered by some stations.”
After volunteering at campus stations, Clayton was whisked away from it to commercial radio, where she stayed for 17 years. During the ’80s and ’90s, she worked in just about every single one of Winnipeg’s radio stations at one point or another.
Although she’s worked a variety of jobs, such as working in a call centre and selling hot dogs, her real love was working in alternative media. Clayton volunteered for a year and a half at UMFM before becoming the station manager, which was the job she held for five years prior to accepting her current job as the station’s spoken word coordinator.
Now that she’s been involved in broadcasting for so many years, she said the reasons behind her work have also matured.
“I was drawn to it because of culture and music, and now I’ve been really drawn into the ability to affect change through radio and through media in terms of politics,” said Clayton, who is also a U of M English student.
The self-described neo-hippie, pagan feminist said that being involved in alternative media is a great way to find out about important issues.
“There are so many things going on in this world. I like being on the alternative media side where we can explore deeper issues,” said Clayton. “We’re not beholden to commercial subscribers, so we don’t have to worry about what we say. We can really look at options for making it a better or different world.”
Clayton plans on creating different connections at UMFM by developing shows that will let people both on and off campus exchange ideas through round table discussions and forums.
“I want to develop UMFM and [its] talk component into being a real forum for quality ideas. I want to see it as being more of a station where there’s lifelong learning and our listeners can be educated at every state of their lives. So with that in mind, there’s a lot of programming I’m trying to develop,” she said.
Even though Clayton has clocked a lot of time in the broadcasting industry, she said she’s excited about whatever the future holds for her. Her future plans are to get involved in archival studies.
“I’ve been a pack rat and collecting cultural ephemera for as long as I can remember. I collect things [like] sound bytes. I think it’s time to get more academic with that and parlay that into a degree,” she said. “I’m really pumped about it. Archival studies! I know it sounds really dull, but I think it’s going to be fascinating.”
Wherever Clayton’s passions lead her, she has a knack for finding the right frequency to make her goals a reality.
