Background
DAWN came into existence due to the foresight and determination of one visionary person, Kim Miller, who was the Rehabilitation Officer for visually-impaired people in Oxfordshire. She had noticed that the South Oxfordshire region lacked any form of talking news service, in contrast to most other parts of the county, so she set about establishing one. Around the end of 1992, a number of like-minded people were persuaded to join her in forming a Steering Committee. Kim's partner, Keith Faulder, was a key player on this committee, providing DAWN with a wealth of technical experience.
Public launch
On 18th February 1993 the Public Launch of DAWN was held at the King's Head and Bell in Abingdon. It was opened by the then Mayor of Abingdon, Councillor Bill Wivell, and attended by 46 people, including representatives from Witney Talking Newspaper and the Talking Newspaper Association of the United Kingdom (TNAUK). A constitution was approved and the initial committee of nine members was elected unopposed. At the first committee meeting a week later, Kim was unanimously elected as the first Chair of DAWN. Prior to the first issue of DAWN tapes, intensive fund-raising had produced over £4,000 for the purchase of equipment, cassette tapes and pouches, although this was not yet sufficient to provide DAWN with the high-speed tape copiers needed for mass duplication. Fortunately, Abingdon Rotaract kindly donated some old copiers to allow the service to get started while further fund-raising continued.
The first edition
By spring 1993 about 24 volunteers had offered their services to DAWN, and a local musician and songwriter had kindly offered to compose a short theme tune in the form of jingles to start and end the tapes. The Post Office agreed to allow the use of the "Articles for the Blind" free postal concession for distribution of the tapes, and the local newspapers - in particular the Herald series - granted permission for the use of their articles. The infrastructure was finally completed with a generous offer from the Abingdon Community Hospital to allow the use of the Day Hospital as a recording centre. With everything now in place, the decision was made to begin the service. On Thursday April 15th 1993, ten volunteers produced the first edition of the weekly DAWN tape, which was sent out to around 90 listeners.
The first year
During the next six months, DAWN was fortunate in being given donations and grants totalling over £6,000, finally enabling the purchase of a suite of high-speed tape copiers in August 1993. This was a very opportune time, as by now the number of listeners had already grown to almost 150, and the old copiers were struggling to meet the demand. In addition to these technical improvements, 1993 also saw DAWN becoming a registered charity, and the mayors of Didcot, Abingdon and Wantage all agreeing to be its patrons. During the year, additional plans had been made for a complementary monthly magazine tape to be known as DAYBREAK to start in 1994, but unfortunately insufficient effort could be found to sustain this as well as DAWN.
The succeeding decades...
Following its launch in 1993, DAWN has rapidly established itself as a valued part of the local community, with around 100 recipients and a volunteer base numbering over 40 people, a few of whom were even present at the time of launch. Since its inception, more than 1200 editions have been produced and over 150,000 tapes or USB memory sticks have been distributed. The Abingdon Community Hospital acted as DAWN's operating base for 16 years, although there was a temporary move to the Podiatry Unit when the Day Hospital was closed for over a year for building work.
Operating conditions were considerably eased in the early years by the provision of cupboards inside the hospital itself, obviating the transfer of heavy equipment on trolleys to and from an outside bicycle shed! Kim stood down as Chair of DAWN in October 1994, to be succeeded by Ken Adams, who was Chair for the next four and a half years. When Ken resigned this role in May 1999 his place was taken by Tony Gillman, one of the original founders of DAWN. Tony was Chair for eight years until he stood down in May 2007, when Oliver Hemming was elected to the post, but Tony returned as Chair for the second time in 2013.
In 2003, DAWN celebrated its tenth anniversary, an event which was widely covered by the local press and by Radio Oxford. The committee decided that this would be an appropriate year to replace the suite of high-speed copiers that had given sterling service for ten years but were now becoming expensive to maintain. A major fund-raising initiative was launched which rapidly achieved its target, and by July 2003 a new suite of modern high-speed tape copiers had been purchased and installed.
In 2009 we were forced to leave the Abingdon Community Hospital at short notice and for a while used Trinity Church Hall as a recording venue. We have now found a more permanant home at the Abingdon Health and Wellbeing Centre in Audlett Drive.
In the middle of April 2011 we switched from recording the weekly news on cassette tape to a digitally recorded memory stick. Memory sticks are a more durable medium and allow each news item to be recorded as a separate track as well giving better sound quality. Listeners not having a way to play these memory sticks have been supplied with a free digital player. The cost of the changeover to digital recording was met by a grant from the Gannett Foundation, part of the Newsquest newspaper publishing group.
Looking forward...
Listeners, supporters and local dignitaries celebrated the twenty fifth anniversary of DAWN in 2018. Looking to the next twenty five years, the DAWN team are looking for ways to expand the number of listeners and are working out the best way to work with smart devices that allow easy interaction with the digital world for the blind and partially sighted.