Project to save sound archive
RECORDINGS COLLECTION TO BE PRESERVED DIGITALLY
AN array of voices describing every aspect of life in the North East will be preserved for future generations as part of an £18.8m sound heritage project.
The British Library venture has been backed by a £9.5m National Lottery grant, with Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM) the lead partner for the project in the North East and Yorkshire.
It will save almost half a million recordings that are threatened by physical degradation or stored on formats that can no longer be played.
Titled “Unlocking Our Sound Heritage”, the programme will delve into the North East and Yorkshire recordings, which include people talking about their home, society, wartime and working lives, classical and popular music, Northumbrian dialect, radio programmes, wildlife recordings, speeches, and the sounds of industry.
A key element will be an interactive website hosted by the British Library – scheduled to go live in 2019 – allowing listeners to explore a wide selection of recordings.
The recordings, many on cassettes and shellac discs, will be digitised and taken out to schools and community groups, with pop-up exhibitions.
Ged Bell, chairman of TWAM’s joint committee, said: “This is a fascinating project and, working with the British Library and partners across the North East and Yorkshire, we’re very much looking forward to being able to share these important and interesting pieces of our sound heritage.”
Ilse Assmann, president of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, said: “A significant part of the world’s cultural heritage is captured in the form of sound recordings.
“These are threatened by decay and media obsolescence and, unless something is done urgently, many recordings will be lost and unavailable for access by future generations.”
The recordings include individuals talking about their lives in the merchant navy, and working on colliers, tugs and Tyne foyboats (used to help larger vessels moor) and as river pilots and in shipyards.
Another category has people describing life in areas of Newcastle such as Byker, Scotswood, Fawdon and in Hebburn and Jarrow from the 1930s-50s.
From South Shields, Minchella’s talk about their ice cream business while former staff describe their times at the town’s Wrights biscuit factory.
And in Gateshead former workers speak about their jobs in the town’s ropery, Davidson’s glassworks and the Co-op’s Pelaw factories.
Memories of life in the Second World War also feature.