Demo tapes

Demo tapes is a new project which brings together newly-digitised sound archives and music groups around the north west region to create new works around the theme of protest.

The blogs below give introductions to some of the recordings we have digitised recently which might inspire you. You can also find a playlist for each north west collection digitised by Unlocking Our Sound Heritage over at our Listen page.

The Archives+ Soundcloud holds all kinds of clips from the sound archives held at Manchester Central Library. Here are some other sound archive resources you might find useful:

• The Women’s Voices, Women’s Lives playlist includes clips of women sharing their stories.
• The Disabled People’s Archive website holds an amazing selection of poetry and song.
• You can listen to clips from oral history projects with Greater Manchester’s people of colour at the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre Soundcloud page.
• This playlist includes a selection of clips relating to LGBTQ+ people’s experiences in Greater Manchester.
• Begin the World Over Again is an inspiring podcast created by the Working Class Movement Library and Walk the Plank using the archive’s radical collections to reflect on life today.
• You’ll hear recordings of folk music, radio and oral history and by the folklorist Paul Graney in some of these blogs. Here’s a biography of Paul in case you want to know more about his life and collection.

Pride, Protest, Action, Art! (Part One)

In preparation for North West Sound Heritage’s launch of ‘Demo Tapes’ (a forthcoming project encouraging the creative reuse of oral
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Pride, Protest, Action, Art! (Part Two)

This is the second part of a selection of archive audio that tells the tale of the power of creative
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Living in the nuclear age

In my previous post on environmental issues I mentioned the Sellafield plant in Cumbria. There have been industrial plants in
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Environment Emergency

Working with collections from Cumbria has given our north west hub a different perspective, one of rural life, a change
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Introducing Demo Tapes

Full of the noise of protest - why are we using sound recordings to inspire the creation of new songs on the theme of protest?
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Songs from the pit

Coal mining has provided material for song-writers for centuries. Songs about mining conditions, disasters and the solidarity between miners and
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Sounds of the sea

The Leaving of Liverpool is a traditional seafaring song which became a folk revival standard thanks to Ewan MacColl. Here's
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Protest Music and Political Life – part 2

Last week I blogged about women's experiences of becoming politically active in the 1930s. Staying with the Manchester Studies collection
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Breaking Into Song

A big part of working on the UOSH project is listening to oral history interviews. All day, every day. Hundreds
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Protest Music and Political Life – part 1

As well as digitising and cataloguing audio collections from across the North West our hub aims to increase access to
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Cotton, Curry and Commerce in Oldham

Cotton, Curry and Commerce was a two-year collaborative oral history project between the Asian Business Association and Oldham Local Studies
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Suffragettes – animation for International Women’s Day

In the run up to International Women's Day I gave a number of sound clips to one of the Archives+ Community
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LGBTQ+ MIXTAPE (Part I)

This LGBT History Month, ‘Unlocking Our Sound Heritage’ presented a room of curated archive audio and immersive projections. Manchester’s LGBTQ+
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The Housewives of Wythenshawe

The Housewives of Wythenshawe: A History of Political Involvement and the Power of Local Campaigns m65238: Benchill School, Wythenshawe, Manchester
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English Voices, Asian Stories

Asian women with children, Fallowfield, Platt Lane, 1983 ref. m22637 In 2005 the Tameside Oral History Project was launched in
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The Sound of Protest

Oral histories are interviews with people talking about their memories of things that have happened in their life. They can
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Fight Like a Girl

She just asked me one day…‘would I like to wrestle?’ The life of a woman wrestler in 1970s Manchester.
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Women’s Voices in the Crowd

Vicki Caren reflects on some of the women's voices she has catalogued so far... I am the Cataloguing Manager for
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