The Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) has received £206,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for a new archive project called Throwing Open the Concert Doors. The project will conserve and digitise thousands of RNCM recordings from 1973 to the present, making them available online and through a new interactive heritage booth at the College. The project is a collaboration with Manchester Digital Music Archive and Manchester Central Library’s Unlocking Our Sound Heritage initiative and is being made possible thanks to money raised from National Lottery players.
The RNCM’s 50th anniversary provides an opportunity to learn more about its role in Manchester’s musical history and inspire communities. A community engagement team will offer workshops, tours, tutorials and hack days to local groups and culminate in a community celebration on 2 July 2023 as part of the RNCM Big Weekend festival. The RNCM’s history is of great significance to Manchester’s cultural heritage, but is largely unknown to the public. The College hopes to use its 50th anniversary as a platform to share its history with the people and communities around it.
This project is one of many funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund since its inception in 1994. National Lottery players have raised over £43 billion for projects, with over 635,000 grants awarded across the UK. A previous RNCM project funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund was Revealing and Reinterpreting ‘Making Music in Manchester during WW1,’ which was part of a collaboration between the College and Paris Conservatoire.
For more information about RNCM50, visit rncm.ac.uk/rncm50
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