The Yorkshire Film Archive collects, preserves, and shows film made in, or about Yorkshire. Our collections are non-fiction, dating from the 1890s to the present day, and providing a rich and visually compelling record of all aspects of lives, cultures, landscape, industries, major events and everyday activities, many of which are available to watch, free of charge, on our website.
This film is part of Free
Calderdale Talking Newspaper
Dedicated volunteers from Halifax provide a talking newspaper service for locals on cassettes, strangely not motivated by money.
From the collection of:
Overview
Local Halifax Cine Club members are on hand to document the new Calderdale Talking Newspaper not long after its first cassette was recorded on 24th October, 1979. Volunteers have got together to bring highlights of all the local news to those in the area with a visual impairment, painstakingly selecting choice articles, recording them fortnightly onto 90 minute cassettes, and posting them in special re-usable envelopes.
This is one of many documentaries made by Halifax Cine Club highlighting aspects of their local area and community. The first talking newspaper in Britain was established in Cardiganshire in January 1970, after librarian Ronald Sturt paid a study visit to Västerås in Sweden in 1968, and saw one in operation. The idea caught on across the country, and by 1974 there were enough to warrant the formation of the Talking Newspaper Association of the United Kingdom (TNAUK). Calderdale Talking Newspaper Association is still in operation but has now moved on from cassettes and provides free audio files on a USB memory stick which can be played on an MP3 player.
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