Period Telephone Audio Point – Coventry Music Museum

After enduring bombing raids during WW2 Coventry saw a golden age throughout the 60’s and 70’s. However this was followed by major unemployment and poverty due to the declining British motor industry. Years later and Coventry has seen a real resurgence, most recently earning the UK’s City of Culture award. This is in no small part due to producing some of the UK’s best known musicians.

Few people pay tribute to Coventry as much as Pete Chambers BEM, Journalist and Director Curator for the Coventry Music Museum who came to us for help with an exhibition. In his own words;

“From Ghost Town to Host Town

Coventry is The City of Culture this year, when you talk about Coventry culture then you must talk about The Specials, seven guys who took the energy of punk and mashed it up with the frantic sound of Ska music. 2-Tone music was created in 1979 and saw the Coventry based movement launch the Coventry Selecter, London band Madness and the Birmingham band The Beat. The Specials swansong in 1981 was the anthemic Ghost Town, a number one record that mourned Britain’s social decay. Telling the story of the song is easy; telling the story of what led to the song being written was harder. Enter the Blackbox AV audio point phone set-up, it’s here we can bring the back-story to life, indeed my personal back-story. People can pick up the phone in the mock-up of a foreman’s office at Morris Engines circa 1972 and learn how it was for me living in the Boom Town.

Each chapter tells my Coventry tale from having money to spare to being on the scrap heap at 23 made redundant from a crumbling British Leyland, for me the song Ghost Town was the soundtrack to my life. The audio point is such a perfect way to tell the story of my boom town, my ghost town and now as we thrive in the city of culture, my host Town.

Thank you Blackbox AV, we love it.”

The period telephone is our unique audio point that allows you to share up to 99 different tracks with visitors, users simply dial a number from 01 – 97 to activate a track. The control unit is compatible with any phone that has a standard BT connection which allows us to provide a finished unit that truly encapsulates the period in question (in this case a lovely yellowed 70’s rotary phone).

Used to great effect in this project the period telephone helps provide an amazing insight into what life was like for many people in boom to bust Coventry as told through the personal story of Pete Chambers.