The Brass Bands Archive has been awarded a grant to support the digitisation of the collection’s most fragile items.
The Archive is a collection of music, programmes, books, recordings and memorabilia covering an array of brass band history. Whilst much of the collection is in a reasonably good condition, there are a number of items of significance that are particularly fragile The grant of £3,000 towards digitisation services has been awarded by sector leading TownsWeb Archiving, an organisation specialising in converting delicate and important moments from history into protected and secure formats. The grant will allow almost all of the Archive’s most fragile items to be digitised.
The archive was rescued from collapse in 2018 by Brass Bands England but it wasn’t until 2020 that the team were able to tackle the significant process of cataloguing the collection, thanks to support from Arts Council England. That cataloguing process is now 75% complete. The remaining items of sheet music are still being catalogued by volunteers at the BBE offices in Barnsley, and anyone wishing to participate in the volunteers scheme should visit the Brass Bands Archive webpage for more information.
The TownsWeb grant is the start of the next phase of the Archive project, which will see the collection reopen to the public. Items will be housed at Heritage Quay in Huddersfield with a launch exhibit planned to coincide with the Yorkshire Regional Contest in March 2023, also in Huddersfield. Alongside this is a plan to begin the long-term process of digitising the collection. This grant will enable BBE to kickstart this phase of the project by digitising approximately 3,000 items at most risk in the collection.
Alex Parker, Brass Bands England Partnership and Relationship Development Manager and Archive project lead, said “We are incredibly grateful to TownsWeb Archiving for this grant. With approximately 180,000 items to digitise, this is an enormous project expected to take several years but thanks to this grant we will be able to make digital records for all of our most fragile and oldest items, helping to secure access to the collection for years to come.”
Alex added “This first set of digitisation records will allow us to make many records available online for the first time. By making these available it will mean brass band culture and history will be available for researchers, the public, and our community in order to help inspire bands across the country to expand their repertoire. We hope that further funding will be available in the future to continue the project and invest in this incredibly valuable resource for the brass band community.”
To find out more about the Brass Bands Archive, please visit the Brass Bands England Website