Rochdale Story Exchange

During summer 2024 the Royal Exchange and the Rochdale Ambassadors & Champions gathered stories of Rochdale from 248 people. Over 30 hours of audio and written stories/poems were collected in conversations with 14 community groups, 4 drop-in Story Exchange Events, and through local people’s self-taped interviews with friends and family.

When I was in Leamington I wrote to my sweetheart, she was living in Nairobi, Kenya, will you still marry me after all these years? And she said yes, and […] then we moved to Rochdale- the best thing that we ever did. – Amin’s story

 

We’re hard. We’re tough. We’ll get through anything together. We’re quite – we’re very multicultural, and we won’t stand nobody messing – (on the people of Rochdale) Zoe’s story

Stories were woven into Tales of the Dale, a brand-new show made for the FestiDale, directed by award-winning theatre and audio directors Nickie Miles-Wildin and Polly Thomas, and curated with Shahid Iqbal Khan (Love Across The Ages, BBC Radio 4; 10 Nights, Bush Theatre).

We are working with local partners to archive the audio recordings, to celebrate and preserve the rich histories of Rochdale they contain.

Everybody went to the Carlton, and everybody danced. Everybody. And it was you know, er, Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, you know all the early rock and roll people. –  Elieen’s story

 

The chippy run, in my home it was like fish and chips religiously on Friday, we’d have them religiously. They used to send me up with a big plastic bowl and say ‘Right, go to chippy and get that filled, see how much they’ll charge you’ and that were it. – Dee’s story