Bristol Archives secures £1m National Lottery grant
Bristol Archives has been awarded more than £1 million from The National Lottery Heritage Fund to help preserve thousands of rare and at-risk audio recordings from across the South West.
The funding will support a new three-year project, Sounds of the South West, which aims to digitise and protect more than 8,000 unique recordings held by 24 heritage organisations across the region. Many of these recordings, stored on ageing formats such as reel-to-reel tapes, are at serious risk of being lost forever.
Led by Bristol Archives, part of Bristol City Council’s Culture service, the project will be delivered in partnership with Archives South West, the regional network of local authority archives. As part of the initiative, communities will be given new opportunities to explore and connect with their local history through access to historic voices, music and sound.
Philip Walker, Head of Culture and Creative Industries at Bristol City Council, said the funding would help safeguard an important part of the region’s social history.
“We’re thrilled that The National Lottery Heritage Fund has chosen to support Sounds of the South West,” he said. “Preserving audio heritage creates a brilliant opportunity for communities to engage with their own past. Thanks to National Lottery players, we can ensure these voices and stories are not lost and are made accessible for future generations.”
Audio heritage is considered particularly vulnerable, with experts warning there may be less than ten years left to save many recordings due to the deterioration of physical media and the disappearance of working playback equipment.
Bristol Archives’ Sound Room is uniquely equipped to digitise most audio formats produced over the last century. With the new funding, it will act as a regional hub for audio digitisation throughout the project and beyond. Once digitised, the recordings will be shared as widely as possible.
Katie Scaife, Project Manager for Sounds of the South West at Bristol Archives, said the project addresses an urgent challenge facing archives across the region.
“This funding allows us to work together to tackle a problem we simply couldn’t solve alone,” she said. “We’re especially excited about involving communities through volunteering and engagement activities, and sharing these sounds not just locally, but with audiences around the world.”
The collection will include oral histories documenting social change, disappearing dialects and accents, evidence of environmental change, historic music and performance recordings, and threatened languages such as Cornish.
Stuart McLeod, Director of England – London & South at The National Lottery Heritage Fund, said the project would help protect the region’s rich and diverse heritage.
“Thanks to National Lottery players, thousands of rare and at-risk recordings will now be preserved,” he said. “This project will help people reconnect with the voices, memories and stories that have shaped communities across the South West.”
More information about Sounds of the South West is available by contacting Bristol Archives at archives@bristol.gov.uk
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