National Lottery Grants for Heritage – £250,000 to £5million
Working in partnership with Archives South West, the project is safeguarding unique materials held by 24 heritage organisations. These range from oral histories and endangered dialects to recordings documenting environmental change, community memories and traditional music and performance.
Many of these recordings are stored on ageing reel-to-reel tapes and other outdated formats. They are at risk of being permanently lost without urgent action.
Bristol Archives’ specialist Sound Room will become a regional hub for audio digitisation, creating high quality digital versions of collections produced over the past 100 years. These recordings will be shared online, creating new opportunities for people to connect with the voices and stories that have shaped the communities in the South West for generations.
The project is also providing volunteering roles and community engagement activities to inspire local involvement and increase access to audio heritage.
Philip Walker, Head of Culture and Creative Industries at Bristol City Council, said: “Preserving audio heritage creates a brilliant opportunity for our communities to engage with their own social history. We are grateful to all National Lottery players, as the funding for this project means we can safeguard voices from the past and make them accessible for future generations, ensuring these stories and sounds are never lost.”
Explore more projects that are preserving cultures and memories across the UK.
