Sunderland's musical memories to be preserved in a £156,166 heritage project
Sunderland Music City has won £156,166 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund for Mackem Music Memories, a project that will collect more than 300 stories from residents and turn them into an exhibition at Culture House Sunderland in summer 2027 and a permanent digital archive.
Sunderland's music scene is to be recorded by the people who lived it. Sunderland Music City has been awarded £156,166 by the National Lottery Heritage Fund for a project called Mackem Music Memories, which will gather residents' most memorable musical moments before those stories are lost.
The plan is to collect more than 300 memories through questionnaires, community research and interviews. The material will look back at the venues, bands, gigs and nights out that shaped the city, while also reflecting Sunderland as it is today, including its South Asian, Filipino, Nigerian and Eastern European communities and its international students.
The memories will be shown in an exhibition at the newly opened Culture House Sunderland in summer 2027, alongside community activity, live events, digital archiving and musical heritage trails. When the exhibition closes in December 2027, the research will be digitised and incorporated into the Sunderland Local Studies Collection, so it remains available after the show ends.
The award follows a rapid rise in the city's musical profile. Sunderland became the second UK city to join the Music Cities Network in 2025, local live venues have since reported higher footfall, and the city hosted Radio 1's Big Weekend in May 2026. The network works with cities that use music to support cultural, social and economic development, from education to rehearsal and recording spaces.
For readers, the interest is in the method as much as the money: instead of a museum deciding what counts as history, the archive starts with an online questionnaire open to anyone, past or present resident, who wants to contribute a memory. It is a reminder that a city's culture is often stored in ticket stubs and stories long before it reaches a gallery wall.
Source: BBC