Tape Letters

On 20 January 2025, Tape Letters, the award-winning podcast, returns with a brand-new second series: Tape Letters Scotland. 

The Tape Letters Scotland project shines a light on the practice of recording and sending messages on cassette tape as an unorthodox method of communication by Pakistanis who migrated and settled in Scotland between 1960-1980. This four-part series features original tape recordings and oral history interviews with Scottish-Pakistani families who used cassette tapes in this way.   

A Modus Arts production. Produced by Steve Urquhart. Narration by Tabassum Niamat. Funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund. 

Imran Arif is a Social Scientist and was a community engagement officer for the Tape Letters oral history project. He carried out multiple interviews for the archive with the elders of the community in multiple languages. In this episode he reflects on his experience of the project and the importance of preserving the stories of previous generations.

A Modus Arts Production. Audio Production and Sound Design by Oliver Sanders, Producer Leona Fensome, Executive Producer Lucia Scazzocchio, Funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council of England.

The Tape Letters project shines light on the practice of recording and sending messages on cassette tape as an unorthodox method of communication by Pakistanis who migrated and settled in the UK between 1960-1980.

Drawing directly both from first-hand interviews and from the informal and intimate conversations on the cassettes themselves, the project seeks to unearth, archive and re/present a portrait of this method of communication, as practised mainly by Potwari-speaking members of the British-Pakistani community, commenting on their experiences of migration and identity, the unorthodox use of cassette tape technology, and on the language used in the recordings.

A Modus Arts Production. Audio Production and Sound Design by Oliver Sanders, Producer Leona Fensome, Executive Producer Lucia Scazzocchio, Funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council of England.

Syma Tariq is a Sound Artist and Journalist focussing on history and politics. Her PhD was entitled “Partitioned listening: sonic methodology and the archive after 1947” and is part of the Tape Letters research team. In this episode she describes the Tape Letters archive as a community resource, produced in collaboration with its subject.

A Modus Arts Production. Audio Production and Sound Design by Oliver Sanders, Producer Leona Fensome, Executive Producer Lucia Scazzocchio, Funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council of England.

The poet Suna Afshan was commissioned by Modus Arts to produce a body of text in response to five cassettes selected from the Tape Letters archive held at the Bishopsgate Institute library. She adopted a poetry as a word-for-word translation approach, and the work is directly informed by the messages and languages on the cassettes, with the aim of reifying speech into ink.

A Modus Arts Production. Audio Production and Sound Design by Oliver Sanders, Producer Leona Fensome, Executive Producer Lucia Scazzocchio, Funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council of England.