WFOHW has been collecting material since 1983 and now has more than 500 recordings. Though the Workshop is an independent voluntary group, since its inception it has had a close relationship with the Vestry House Museum, Walthamstow - the local studies museum and archive for the London Borough of Waltham Forest. Our recordings are stored there and available for public use.

When we began we used some of the best and worst equipment available at the time, but there are more than 400 audio cassettes in the Vestry House archive which are of varying quality and only accessible at the museum by appointment. We now mostly record digitally on flash memory cards and quality has certainly improved since 1983; all recordings since March 2003 have been digitised on accession to the collection.

We want the archive to be opened up and intend to develop our storage and playout, planning to:

• create an online index by January 2006 (now online, see recordings database page)
• digitise all analogue recordings by January 2008
• include at least two hours of audio from key recordings on this website by January 2007
• develop a playout system to be used in the museum to enable easier listening by researchers by July 2008.

The Workshop is an unfunded voluntary group and resources are always limited. Any funding or direct help to achieve this plan would be most welcome.