Bespoke Table and Period Telephone – Food Museum

Do you mash, soak or brew your tea? Have you had bevers, docky or fourses? The ‘In Your Words’ community exhibition (in partnership with the University of Leeds’ Dialect and Heritage Project) celebrates East Anglian voices past and present. Featuring historic audio recordings of people discussing food and farming, as well as newly recorded interviews by project volunteers, the exhibition promises to be an aural feast.

To make some of these extracts available to visitors, we were commissioned to produce a bespoke audio table as well as supply one of our standard period telephones to be housed within a red phone box. For the table visitors can simply press buttons correlating to various colourful labels with audio accessible via 4 x Single Cup Headphones.

Dialect is important. It connects us to people and places, and shapes who we are. The words we use, how we put them together and how we say them matters – to us, to others and to the rich and ever-changing history of language.
– Kate Knowlden, Curator at Food Museum

The recordings on the Period Telephone were digitised as part of the University of Leeds’ Dialect and Heritage Project and are now available to hear for the first time – users just dial a number between 01 – 99 to call up the past.

This collection provides a fascinating insight into the everyday lives of local people and was made possible with thanks to National Lottery players through The National Lottery Heritage Fund.