The Northumbria Anthology is building up a continuously expanding collection of songs and poems from the North East of England. The region covered stretches from North Yorkshire to the Scottish Border. The first stage of the project was partly funded by a Millennium Heritage grant of £90,000. We’re a non-profit making organisation, and sales revenue will be used to finance additions to the collection. In 1999, we engaged Geordie musician Johnny Handle as researcher. He has compiled an extensive amount of vernacular material, mainly from the 19th and early 20th Centuries. From this base of over 3000 titles, we’ve recorded songs in a variety of musical styles. These range from the orchestral arrangements of David Haslam to contemporary folk and rock. As well as new recordings, the Anthology has been able to draw on material produced by Newcastle record company Mawson & Wareham since 1970. This includes recordings by Owen Brannigan, Alex Glasgow, Sheila Armstrong and Sir Thomas Allen. A selection of albums and videos from the project are on sale in record shops throughout the North East, including two albums of highlights from The Northumbria Anthology: From Tyne to Tweed features songs from the Northern half of our region, and From Tees to Tyne is a collection of songs from the Southern half. The albums are available on both CD and cassette and can be purchased separately. And the Anthology's most important release so far is a twenty CD boxed set containing around 300 songs. Copies of the set are being distributed free of charge to selected libraries and schools in the North East. Each CD in the set contains a selection of songs from a particular area. Eventually, the individual CDs in the boxed set will go on sale separately, although by this time, we will have included more tracks as the Anthology project continues to record additional titles. We work in collaboration with the International Centre for Music Studies of the University of Newcastle, where there are strong research and performance interests in the music of the North East. The Department runs a degree course in folk and traditional music.

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