A project celebrating the British jukebox and its influence on teenage culture in the Fifties and Sixties will have a lasting legacy at Lancaster University.
Jukebox: The Teenage Revolution has been a year-long programme of events and research run by Lancaster-based arts and heritage charity, Mirador, in partnership with Lancaster University Library.
Students from a range of backgrounds and mainly studying arts and social sciences were recruited to interview people who were teenagers in the Fifties and Sixties about their experiences of this iconic era in popular culture.
The students involvement has helped them to develop their skills and promote a wider awareness of opportunities in the heritage sector.
More than 30 people were interviewed from Lancaster and Morecambe as well as from Blackpool and Lytham St Annes where the first British jukeboxes were produced.
Also among those interviewed were Karl Dawson who has a Jukebox Museum in St Annes; Adrian Horn, a former honorary research fellow at the university and author of Juke Box Britain; and Jack Hylton Jnr, the son of famous band leader and impresario, Jack Hylton who was pivotal in bringing the jukebox to the UK and whose archive is at the university.
The eight student interviewers and others involved in the project received oral history training funded by donations from the friends and supporters of Lancaster University.
The recordings were made digitally and all those who provided their memories will receive copies of their interviews.
The university library’s Special Collections and Archives will hold the recordings along with memorabilia donated by some of those interviewed. All will be accessible to the general public for free.
A project website featuring links to the interviews and all the background information about Jukebox: The Teenage Revolution is due to be launched in January.
Lancaster University Library is a past winner of the Outstanding Library Team at the Times Higher Education Awards for their aim to “connect, innovate and include”, ensuring that the wider community see the library as a resource they can use.
“The Jukebox project has provided an amazing opportunity to explore the local heritage of the British jukebox,” said Phil Cheeseman, Lancaster University Library’s associate director: teaching and engagement.
“Through our partnership with Mirador we have been able to reach new communities, provide opportunities for students to participate in community research, and have established a rich archive that captures and preserves the memories and stories of the jukebox era.”
About Lancaster University
Lancaster University is a collegiate university in the UK city of Lancaster and a member of the N8 Research Partnership: an association of the eight most research-intensive universities in the North of England.
Lancaster University is a highly ranked UK university with a global reputation for excellence in research and teaching. Lancaster is consistently ranked among the top 15 in all three major UK university league tables and continues to build a growing reputation both nationally and internationally.
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About the Garfield Weston Foundation
Established in 1958, the Garfield Weston Foundation is a family-founded grant-maker that gives money to support a wide variety of charities across the UK. The Foundation’s funding comes from an endowment of shares in the Weston family business – a successful model that still exists today. The Weston family have a consistent aim. The more successful the family businesses, the more money the Foundation can donate.
Each year the Foundation gives away its income and donations have continued to grow. Since it was established it has donated over £1.5 billion, of which over half has been given away in the past ten years. In the most recent financial year the Foundation gave away over £100 million to nearly 1,800 charities across the UK.
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Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture.
We have set out our strategic vision in Let’s Create that by 2030 we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish and where every one of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences.
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