Centre for Lifelong Learning Online Catalogue

This talk, illustrated with rare photographic images and brass band instruments you can handle, charts the development of the greatest cultural achievement of the working class- the brass band. It will cover developments of the band from Victorian days, the reason for the 'Ruritarian' uniforms, the rise of women in the brass band movement and the strange theory that bands suppressed rather than liberated the working class. Raymond Thomson is the former Deputy Director of the Centre for Lifelong Learning.