Administrative/biographical history

Sounds from the Park was a one-year project to record the history of Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, London, from its origins in the late nineteenth century up 2013. Orators, hecklers and crowd members were interviewed. A Speakers’ Corner archive of oral histories, documents and sound recordings were gathered and deposited at Bishopsgate Institute.

Sounds from the Park was managed by On the Record Community Interest Company in partnership with Bishopsgate Institute. It was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Barry Ameil and Norman Melburn Trust.

On the Record was a small, not for profit co-operative whose aim was to record people’s histories by engaging those who lived through a historic event/period as well as encouraging volunteer participation. The company was established by joint Managing Directors Rosa Schling and Laura Mitchison.

Scope and content

The collection includes:

• Individual deposits collected from orators, hecklers and crowd members. These primarily consist of digital or digitised photographs, but also include audio-visual recordings, articles and ephemera, (1905-2012)
• Oral history interviews conducted with thirty orators, hecklers and crowd members with associated transcripts and portraits, (2013).

Quantity

75 Digital folders.