ABSTRACT
The Women’s Liberation Music Archive (WLMA) 1 is an online collection of digitised photographs, ephemera, music, film, radio interviews and oral histories centred on the music making communities connected to the UK Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM), 1970–1989. The WLM was one of the most significant social movements in post-war Britain. It mobilised thousands of women to challenge and redefine their place within society across public and private domains. 2 The WLMA documents an important cultural aspect of the movement: its music making activities. It is largely a collection of grassroots political music, and since the site was launched in May 2011 it has proved popular, receiving over 52,000 visits as of May 2013. The online archive has also been the inspiration for an exhibition, Music & Liberation, which toured the UK in autumn 2012. 3 The exhibition featured much of the content from the online site but also displayed objects, such as musical instruments, reel-to-reel tapes, cassette tapes, vinyl, diaries, notebooks and t-shirts, as well as interactive installations.
