Welcome to the Daphne Oram Trust Newsletter August 2026
This is the first mailout from the Daphne Oram Trust, where we will be aiming to keep you up to date with activities, dates and revelations from the continued work on Daphne Oram’s life, work and legacy.
This year is Daphne’s centenary, and as such, is a particularly busy time. We were granted an HLF Lottery grant earlier in the year, which aims to bring Oram’s work to a larger, more diverse audience, at a time where the playing field for women and gender minority composers and music tech professionals remains distinctly unbalanced. As the result of a widely circulated consultation survey gathering 60+ responses, and 5 interviews, we know that awareness of her work is extremely mixed – some (largely academics) being enthusiastic experts, whereas others struggle to pinpoint the name. The bid looks to address this a series of activities to mark the centenary, including workshops and a symposium, which brings us to our first point of order:
SAVE THE DATE: 21st November
National Science and Media Museum, Bradford
On the 21st November we will be hosting a one day symposium bringing together researchers, artists and performers at the National Science and Media Museum Bradford. More information on this to come, please check the website for further details.
Workshops
Some workshops and events have already taken place. The above image comes from a poster made by children in one of the workshops. Carolyn Scales, Daphne’s niece and trustee, was involved in the workshop at Pioneer Projects in July this year, taking along photos of Daphne’s childhood. There was a screening of a 5-minute stop motion film made by teenagers at Pioneer Projects with the help of Sophie Cooper, the soundtrack made using the Oram archives, music concrete, live instruments and singing. In Huddersfield, the Yorkshire Sound Women Network hosted a cohort of 14 young people who used BBC micro to make their own instruments inspired by Oram’s work. You can read updates on that workshop via their Facebook feed. As part of the HLF grant we are also developing KS2 and KS3 education packs to be used in schools.
Research
Some exciting research is underway, with Sarah Angliss and Andrew McPherson continuing to work on recovering data from Daphne’s Apple and Acorn Floppy discs, where they believe there may be some fascinating but little-understood computer code. Elsewhere, unexplored archival material continues to be scanned, and an oral history is underway, talking to people close to Daphne.
Joe Wright and Tom Richards, who built the Mini Oramics are developing a prototype that builds an Oramics score reader into a line-following robot, and a handheld MIDI-Oramics device that can read an Oramics score using a printed template. Tom performed in Hamburg, and is starting new conversations with potential collaborators to expand the reach of the instrument.