Poster advertising the launch of the first National Lottery draw on the 19th Novemeber 1994. Image by Jonathan Player This November we’re celebrating the National Lottery’s 30th Birthday! For three decades now the National Lottery has been a driving force behind countless heritage projects across the UK. With the National…

We’re delighted to announce that the sound archive now has the privilege of housing one of only two Endpoint cylinder replay machines in Europe, expanding our capabilities for preserving historical audio recordings in the UK. This exciting development was made possible by the Unlocking our Sound Heritage project, generously supported…

An evocation of emotional memory for the healing of past trauma, separation and loss Guest blog by Edison Fellow Jonathan Emeruwa Fisk Jubilee Singers I am hoping to show through my essay the way in which melodic arrangement in certain African American classical music compositions and African American spirituals from…

In 2018 the British Library ran their Windrush Exhibition, Songs from a Strange Land, which featured multiple recordings from the sound archive. To coincide with this the Learning Team designed a digital education programme entitled ‘Walk in their footsteps: Windrush Voices,’ which was later developed into an on-site workshop for…

Introduction Part 3 of a guest blog by Andrew O. Krastins. Part 1 can be found here. Part 2 can be found here. In the last two parts of this blog, the reader learned how the Mystery Cylinders traveled from their unknown point of origin to the desk of a…