Unlocking Our Sound Heritage Bristol Culture

Bristol Culture

Bristol archive building, surrounded by greenery and the river.

Published date:: 17 June 2021

Bristol Archives, part of Bristol City Council’s Culture & Creative Industries team, is proud to be the home of the Unlocking Our Sound Heritage hub for South West England. In our Sound Room we are digitising collections from:

Bristol Archives
Bristol Libraries
Corinium Museum
Devon Heritage Centre
Gloucestershire Archives
Island Archives Guernsey
Kresen Kernow
Museum in the Park Stroud
North Devon Record Office
Somerset Archives and Local Studies
Telegraph Museum Porthcurno
University of Bristol Theatre Collection

Largely consisting of oral history, these diverse collections from across the area combine to shed light on the lived experience of local people over the last 100 years. Stand out collections include (but are by no means limited to):

Bristol Archives’ British Empire and Commonwealth Collection oral histories - This important collection captures 20th-century memories of people living and working across the British Empire and Commonwealth.
Bristol Libraries’ Bristol People’s Oral History Project - Collected by Steven Humphries for a PhD project, it’s a stunning record of working class childhood and youth in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Gloucestershire Archives’ Cotswold Roundabout - Hospital Radio programs recorded from 1960s–1980s featuring local news, dialect, music, arts, culture and social interest.
Island Archives Guernsey’s oral histories - This intriguing collection features interviews with islanders about the German occupation of Guernsey during World War Two.
Somerset Archives and Local Studies’ Exmoor Oral History - Over 200 interviews capture life on Exmoor in the 20th century.
Kresen Kernow’s Cornish Audio Visual Archive - A wide ranging oral history collection covering agriculture, brass bands, geographical communities, identity, kinship, mining, politics and religion and featuring Cornish language interviews.
Devon Heritage Centre’s Dartington Hall Michael Chekhov and Deirdre Hurst du Prey archives - Recordings from the 1970s–1990s that include Michael Checkhov’s lectures, interviews and radio broadcasts relating to acting techniques methods, theatre, and the work of other directors and performers.
Telegraph Museum Porthcurno’s Cable and Wireless Collection - Various interviews with Cable and Wireless staff and partners detail the history and importance of this ground-breaking site.