Recording of the week: Setting up the Athena Project

In belated celebration of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (February 11), this week’s selection comes from Emmeline Ledgerwood, Voices of Science Web Coordinator. In 2005 the Athena Swan Charter was launched to encourage higher education and research institutions to support the advancement of women working in…

Recording of the week: Voices of Partition

This week’s post comes from Charlotte James, Web Content Developer for Unlocking Our Sound Heritage. In August 1947, Gurbakhsh Singh Garcha learned about the Partition of India over his uncle’s radio. Gurbakhsh was a young boy living in a small village north of Delhi when officials announced that British India…

Recording of the week: The role of the creator in improvised dance

This week’s selection comes from Giulia Baldorilli, Sound and Vision Reference Specialist. Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash. In this 1991 interview from the collection ‘ICA talks’ (C95/795), the renowned artist and dancer Trisha Brown considers the experience and exploration of gravity in her works, and discusses the role of…

In the words of survivors: what was ‘ordinary’ about the Holocaust?

By Dr Madeline White, Curator of Oral History. Reflecting on the Holocaust Memorial Day 2023 theme of ‘ordinary people’, I wondered what – if anything – the word ‘ordinary’ meant to the people who survived the genocide. In a time that was by all accounts extra-ordinary, what value does the…

Recording of the week: Bob Cobbing (1920-2002)

This week’s recording of the week was selected by Steve Cleary, Lead Curator, Literary and Creative Recordings. Above: Image of Bob Cobbing from a scan supplied by Jennifer Cobbing in 2008. Photographer not known. This is a selection from the personal tape archive of the British sound poet Bob Cobbing….