Our Revealing Voices project is gathering momentum with our fully-equipped studio open in Stoke, regular deliveries of digitised audio files and a team of regular audio archeologists.
Following our official launch at the Brampton Museum in November, we have been assembling the equipment needed for the project, including computers, headphones, MP3 players, an audio-visual system and a megaphone. We have also been kitting out the studio with furniture and storage facilities.
Meanwhile, over 400 reel-to-reel tapes were taken to Greatbear in Bristol to be digitised. The company has been busy over the past few months, loading up tapes and producing the digital formats that are used for archiving and listening so that they can be catalogued. Batches of the resulting files are regularly dispatched back to us on flash drives. Over two-thirds of the files have now been returned.
The Revealing Voices studio opened at the end of January and was launched on 14 February with a special event and a presentation from documentary filmmaker and friend of Arthur Wood, Ray Johnson. The event included selected audio files from the collection and archive films on which Ray collaborated with Arthur and others in which Arthur played with local jazz musicians.
The studio is now open regularly on Monday’s and Tuesdays by our Project Officer, Isla Telford. Isla is on hand to help with the technology and volunteers find their own ways of working – some happy to view the wave forms from the files, listen and type directly into a word processer, while others sit back with headphones on, writing notes to be typed up later. Most people thoroughly enjoy the process and come back regularly.
After a slow start, we should soon see the first 100 files catalogued as the work, and our experience, builds.
If you are interested in taking part in the project, you can get in touch with us through the contact page of this site or call Isla Telford on 07743 548313. With such a wide range of subject matter to listen to, you will be glad you did!