Museum gets £30k to revive festival days
TOUCHSTONES has been granted £30,000 to put on an exhibition looking back at the Deeply Vale music festivals.
That Festival Feeling will see young people 30 young people working with festival-goers, performers and organisers to collect stories and create an exhibition and oral archive of the festival.
The exhibition will go on show at Touchstones next summer, looking back on the impact of the free festivals, which saw the likes of The Fall, The Ruts, Durutti Column, Misty in Roots and Mick Hucknall’s first band, the Frantic Elevators, perform during the late 70s.
The group will visit the newly opened British Music Experience in Liverpool, have a go at creating some of their own music and research collections at the Arts & Heritage Resource Centre.
Karen Heatley, Touchstones museum curator and collections manager, said: “We are thrilled to have received support thanks to National Lottery players and excited to begin working with young people on this project. By creating a bridge between popular culture and local history we want to break down barriers for young people and make heritage more relevant to their lives. Many people remember Deeply Vale fondly and 2018 will be the 40th anniversary of Deeply Vale’s most successful event. We are currently looking for your stories from the Deeply Vale festival in 1978 and would love to hear from anyone who attended and has an interesting story or memory from the event. We are particularly interested in people who have objects or material that we could loan for the exhibition that could accompany their story.”
Darren Grice, Head of Community, Health and Participation at Link4Life added: “We are really pleased to receive this support from the Heritage Lottery Fund for the Deeply Vale project. At Touchstones Rochdale we aim to shine a light on the things that make the Borough such a fantastic and creative place. The Deeply Vale festival really demonstrates this and working with local residents to share that amazing story will be an absolute privilege.”
Anyone with memories or artefacts from Deeply Vale they’d like to share with the exhibition should contact 641085.