Broadcasting diversity, empowered by flexibility

Institution: multicult.fm
Collaboration Period:
2013 - 2023
View Site: https://multicult.fm/
(archived version on web.archive.org, 29.03.2023)

multicult.fm was a volunteer‑operated radio station based in Berlin, presenting the multicultural pulse of a diverse region. As the team's web developer throughout most of the station’s lifetime, I helped translate our vision of interactive, inclusive broadcasting into a flexible online presence.

Organizational highlights

The station combined a small permanent team with a constantly changing group of volunteers, many of them creative contributors with multicultural backgrounds. This dynamic environment brought a steady stream of fresh and diverse ideas, enriching the programming and the team. At the same time, the volunteering nature of the work limited the resources available for website maintenance and updates. For the CMS, this meant finding the right balance: it had to offer a great deal of flexibility to accommodate new requests, while also providing the stability necessary to keep the platform reliable and sustainable over time.

Technical highlights

Balancing flexibility and stability

We achieved the balance between flexibility and stability by building the site on Drupal's paragraph types and other content structures. This gave editors freedom to work creatively within a stable framework, while allowing layouts and formats to adapt as the station’s needs evolved.

Programme schedule integration

A key challenge was integrating the programme schedule, which was managed within external systems. We wanted listeners to access weekly overviews, daily listings, and real-time "now playing" updates. The CMS handled this through API requests and multiple output formats. To balance dynamic updates with resource efficiency, programme data were stored as a copy in the CMS, accepting a short delay of a few minutes for schedule changes in exchange for stability.

Episode archive management

Another major task was building an archive of past episodes. Frequent "da capo" replays created duplicates, which needed careful handling. On the public side, replays were displayed in their time slots with clear indicators. On the editorial side, we avoided duplication by marking multiple time slots within a single episode entry, reducing workload while keeping the archive clean and accurate.

Lars Stiebenz was one of the cornerstones of the community radio station multicult.fm from its very beginning until its final days. In his role as webmaster and web developer, he oversaw the professional distribution of the content created by the program producers on a high standard.

Working directly with countless journalists from diverse cultural backgrounds, he demonstrated incredible sensitivity and patience, managing to address their individual needs while still maintaining the station’s corporate design — an admirable balancing act that attests to skills that go beyond professional competence!

In our management team, of which he was a member from the very beginning, he was always a trusted confidant and colleague to me personally, with whom I could discuss the challenges facing the radio station on an equal footing.

The entire team — and of course our listeners as well — are deeply grateful to him!

Brigitta Gabrin
Managing Director multicult radio + medienproduktionen gUG