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.

Musicians Pops Roberts and Phillip Howley are leading workshops with young people at More Music in Morecambe, Collective Encounters in Liverpool and Brighter Sound in Manchester in May and June 2021. The groups will listen to newly-digitised sound archives relating to protest and politics and create new works in response to them.

These new tracks will be added to the archive and will be performed at a free live-streamed gig from Manchester Central Library on 13 July 6-8pm.

The blogs listed below give introductions to some of the recordings we have digitised recently which might inspire you, including stories of political involvement, queer creative response, anti-nuclear protest, climate change, industrial protest and mass trespass. Where possible we have included download links in case you would like to sample the clips.

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.