"When you say on archive shelves, whose archive?"
Sorry Steve - I thought I'd posted this
All the recorded meetings were taken by Charles Parker with the intention of getting secretary (at the Midlands Beeb) to transcribe them - she did a few earlier ones.
Charles continued to retain them (though he didn't record all of them) and, on his death, they were considered part of his personal collection and deposited in The Birmingham Central Library archive (a bit of an archival Black Hole, not easy to access)
Ewan and Peg kept copies of many, which they allowed me to copy for our Manchester Workshop in the late sixties - these ended up in the British Library and, on Ewan's death, everything in their personal collection went to Ruskin College.
Shortly after our move to Ireland, I finally got permission to copy the entire group meetings - 200 plus cassettes (after a fifteen year struggle) - we still have these, along with numerous seminars he and Peggy did - a substantial collection, all in all.
While we were making the two Ewan centenary programmes, Peggy gave us Carte Blanche to make use of everything recorded their home in Beckenham, as we saw fit.
It's always been my intention to make a 'user pack' of some of the basic work the Group did for distribution to anybody who might want to make use of it - voice and singing exercises Ewan's adaptation of Laban's technique on efforts, the work on tone and the use he made of Stanislavski - all pretty ground-breaking stuff.
Made a start several times, but always got interrupted.
That we all live long enough.
" Ewan MacColl never sang it"
Should he have done?
Jim Carroll