SCOPE ORAL HISTORY FINDS HOME AT BRITISH LIBRARY
Scope’s pioneering oral history of people with cerebral palsy, Speaking for Ourselves, has now deposited over 230 hours of recorded testimonies by people with cerebral palsy, aged 50 and over, with the British Library Sound Archive, where it will be freely available to students, researchers and the general public.
This new archive is just part of the Heritage Lottery funded project’s drive to make this historically important collection available to a wider public, through monthly podcasts, a free Citizenship teaching pack that has already been requested by over 1,800 schools and colleges, a website and the development of training materials.
The project gives fascinating insights into the lives of disabled people in the 20th Century and reveals the extent of the prejudice disabled people faced. In the first podcast, which focuses on disabled people as consumers, Alan Counsell recalls: “And when we went to the estate agent, to buy this house, he wouldn’t look at me, he wouldn’t speak to me, all his comments went to Katherine, and in the end I said to him, ‘Why are you speaking to my wife, and not to me?’ And he didn’t know what to say. I said, ‘Well, you need to be very careful because I have all the money. She’s got nothing.’”
Alex White, the project manager for Speaking for Ourselves, said: “We hope that Speaking for Ourselves will enable disabled people’s voices to be heard and help to banish disablism from our society.”
Rob Perks, Oral History Curator at the British Library Sound Archive said, “We are proud to host the Speaking for Ourselves collection as archived resources of first-hand accounts from disabled people are still relatively rare in British archives and libraries. This is an important addition to our growing oral history collections relating to the experience of disability in the UK.”
For more information on the project, visit www.speakingforourselves.org.uk or call 020 7619 7228.
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For more information please contact Lucy Pogson, Scope Press Officer on: 020 7619 7201 or email: lucy.pogson@scope.org.uk
Notes to Editors:
· Scope is a national disability organisation whose focus is people with cerebral palsy. Our aim is that disabled people achieve equality: a society in which they are as valued and have the same human and civil rights as everyone else. www.scope.org.uk
· Speaking for Ourselves is funded by a £185,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The free DVD and teaching pack is available from www.speakingforourselves.org.uk
· The British Library Sound Archive is one of the largest in the world. It holds over a million discs, 200,000 tapes, and many other sound and video recordings. The collections come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound from music, drama and literature, to oral history and wildlife sounds. They range from cylinders made in the late 19th century to the latest CD, DVD and minidisc recordings. The archive holds copies of commercial recordings issued in the United Kingdom, together with selected commercial recordings from overseas, radio broadcasts and many privately-made recordings. It also offers public access to a wide range of specialist publications, books, magazines and journals covering every aspect of recorded sound. For more information about access to these collections visit the website at http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/nsa.html and, for information about the Sound Archive’s disability holdings, http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/disability.html
· Podcast is available at www.effective-podcasting.com/podcasts/scope/speaking-for-ourselves-01.mp3
· The complete 'Speaking for Ourselves' audio collection will be publicly accessible at the British Library Sound Archive, collection reference C1134. Catalogue details at www.cadensa.bl.uk. Details about access at http://www.bl.uk/collections/sound-archive/nsaservices.html
· Pictures available from the Scope press office.