Catalogue description Workers Educational Association (WEA) Lectures, Birmingham

This record is held by Birmingham: Archives, Heritage and Photography Service

Details of MS 4000/5/2/2
Reference: MS 4000/5/2/2
Title: Workers Educational Association (WEA) Lectures, Birmingham
Arrangement:

The tapes are arranged as follows:

 

MS 4000/5/2/2/1 Actuality inserts for WEA lectures Sep. 1964

 

('Ewan Instrumental Examples').

 

MS 4000/5/2/2/2-3 Actuality inserts for WEA lectures. Oct.-Dec. 1964

 

MS 4000/5/2/2/4-11 Actuality inserts for WEA lectures Jan.-Oct. 1965

 

including radio programmes and

 

extracts from A.L.Lloyd's 'Epic

 

Survivals' and the radio ballads.

 

MS 4000/5/2/2/12-13 Singing/discussion at/for WEA Feb. 1969

 

Classes.

 

MS 4000/5/2/2/14 Discussion about 'protest song Sep. 1970

 

movement' and folk revival at

 

WEA class.

 

MS 4000/5/2/2/15-18 Bob Etheridge interviewing workers Feb.-Mar. 1971

 

at the Morris Commercial factory,

 

Saltley about folk music; radio

 

Programme.

 

MS 4000/5/2/2/19 Interview of Worcester teachers Nov. 1973

 

about folk music for/at WEA class.

 

MS 4000/5/2/2/20 Actuality inserts for Ladywood Mar 1977

 

WEA Class. Closed To Public

 

MS 4000/5/2/2/21 Actuality inserts for Ladywood Mar. 1977

 

WEA Class

Held by: Birmingham: Archives, Heritage and Photography Service, not available at The National Archives
Language: English
Administrative / biographical background:

Charles Parker worked as a freelance lecturer in the 1960s and 1970s for the Workers Educational Association (WEA) and the University of Birmingham Extra-Mural Department in folksong and oral history. His lecturing work is of enormous significance and national importance. Charles Parker used 'actuality' recordings (voices and songs of ordinary people) to illustrate his belief that vernacular speech is the key to communication and that people, and particularly those in education, needed to learn from this in order to communicate effectively in the future. Another central theme of his lecturing was his belief that capitalist industrial society was in danger of losing touch with its historical and social traditions which are essential for establishing and maintaining a social identity.

 

The recordings in this series mainly comprise examples of the 'actuality' used by Charles Parker in some of his WEA lectures rather than recordings of the lectures themselves. They also include recordings at the Morris Commercial factory, Saltley with Bob Etheridge talking to the workers about folk music at MS 4000/5/2/2/15-18.

 

See written documentation on lectures by Charles Parker for the WEA and the University of Birmingham Extra-Mural Department 1964-1977 at MS 4000/1/3/2.

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