Manchester District Music Archive
| Founders | Matthew Norman Alison Surtees Abigail Ward CP Lee Dave Rofe |
|---|---|
| Registration no. | 1164179 |
| Legal status | Registered Charity |
| Location |
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Area served
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Greater Manchester |
| Product | Online Community Archive |
| Method | Volunteering |
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Members
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3000 |
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Key people
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Alison Surtees - Co Founder Abigail Ward - Co Founder Matthew Norman - Co Founder Dave Rofe - Co Founder CP Lee - Co Founder and Co Chair Dave Carter - Co Chair Aidan O'Rourke - Trustee Cathy Brooks - Treasurer Sarah Feinstein - Trustee |
| Slogan |
Manchester Digital Music Archive is a user-led online archive established to celebrate Greater Manchester music and its social history. We are a registered charity run by volunteers. Est. 2003 Charity no. 1164179 |
| Mission | To celebrate Greater Manchester music, protect its heritage and promote awareness of its cultural importance |
| Website | Manchester Digital Music Archive |
Manchester Digital Music Archive is a user-led online archive established to celebrate Greater Manchester music and its social history.
We are a registered charity run by volunteers.
Est. 2003
Manchester Digital Music Archive (MDMarchive) is an online community archive founded in 2003 by Matthew Norman, Alison Surtees, Abigail Ward, CP Lee and Dave Rofe. It was created as a way of celebrating and raising awareness of Greater Manchester's musical heritage and protecting collections of material held by individuals and institutions relating to the subject. Towards the end of 2015 it became a registered charity.
The archive, originally named Manchester District Music Archive, came about in 2003 after Surtees and Norman had the idea of making a documentary about the Greater Manchester music scene, loosely based on CP Lee’s book ‘Shake, Rattle and Rain’. Realising the subject was too vast to be contained within a documentary, Surtees and Norman, alongside Dave Rofe and CP Lee, decided to launch a campaign to create a Greater Manchester music museum. Abigail Ward joined the team shortly afterwards and began to develop an online presence for the project. Lee's book covered the history of Manchester music from 1955 - 1995 and contained an extensive band list at the end of the book, which was used a starting point when populating the band list on the Manchester Digital Music Archive website.
A seminar was held at Urbis in 2004 to officially launch the newly constituted organisation with a panel featuring Jon Savage, CP Lee, Guy Garvey, Mark Radcliffe and Jan Hargreaves. Hundreds attended the event and it was announced that the intention was to set up a museum where people could donate items of music ephemera to the collection. The co-founders then spent a number of years trying to create a physical space for the archive but after years of struggling to find something suitable, a website was set up in 2006, which allowed users to upload images of their own personal artefacts, along with associated memories, relating to Greater Manchester music, musicians, DJs and venues. This online archive was developed by Abigail Ward with web designer Ashley Kennerley (Go Bang! Design).
In 2007 and 2014, Manchester Digital Music Archive won the Big Chip best not-for-profit project award.
As of December 2015 the site has in excess of 3000 members who have uploaded material relating to more than 3350 bands, 600 DJs and 1000 venues. Users are encouraged to provide memories and anecdotes along with their artefacts and the only stipulation is that items need to be linked to acts or venues from Greater Manchester. All genres of music are covered and as well as an extensive collection of pop memorabilia, the archive includes material relating to the history of the Royal Northern College of Music and the Halle Orchestra. Users can comment on and discuss items uploaded by others or curate online themed exhibitions using material from the site. The site has a number of these exhibitions on various subjects including Moss Side and Hulme club culture, City Fun fanzine, Manchester's LGBT music and club culture and Royal Northern College of Music students who served in World War I.
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