Rebellious Sounds Archive

The Rebellious Sounds Archive is a Heritage Lottery Fund-supported community archive that will be created across 2017 – 2019, which will collect and exhibit oral histories of women’s activism from the South West region.

The project focuses on creating a new community archive of stories that will take the shape of a mobile listening booth, built like a voting booth, so it can tour to gather, record and share these oral histories by women.

In the centenary year of the very first votes by women (2018), this collection is very timely and can work as a catalyst, uncovering previously unknown stories about this heritage. We hope that the contemporary archive of stories will illuminate and inspire people to find out about their heritage and possible connections to the women’s suffrage campaign from 100 years ago.

This project presents an opportunity to commemorate, consider, share the heritage of women from that time, before it is lost forever, and the People’s Representative Act of 1918, to recognise how women’s suffrage has acted as a catalyst for contemporary women’s activism.

This archive will comprise of around 40 – 60 audio interviews and related transcripts. As the project progresses a digital platform for exploring the oral histories will also be created.

Time period covered: 20th and 21st century.