Administrative/biographical history

Tape Letters is an oral history project aiming to identify, collect and archive messages sent on cassette tape in the 1960s through to the 1980s by families who migrated to the UK from Pakistan between 1950 and 1970. The project seeks to unearth, archive and re/present a portrait of the cultural heritage of Punjabi (specifically Potwari dialect) speaking Pakistanis who settled in Britain, and will comment on family life via the informal and intimate conversations recorded and sent between families here (in the UK) and abroad. The recordings are a sonographic snapshot of the migratory experience and provide an insight into the early development of the British-Pakistani identity.

Scope and content

Material from the Tape Letters Project, including: recordings of audio cassettes, oral history interviews and transcripts, and photographs & other material deposited by various interviewees of the Tape Letters Project (2017-2018).