Bradford – At the heart of the UK’s City of Culture 2025, an extraordinary exhibition is tuning into voices from the past that still resonate with love, longing and cultural resilience. Tape Letters, a powerful audio-visual experience running from 22 May to 15 June at Loading Bay’s Gallery, sheds light on a long-overlooked form of connection that held British-Pakistani families together during times of distance and migration.
Curated specifically for Bradford 2025, the exhibition explores a deeply personal chapter of community history — when cassette tapes became lifelines between those who had settled in the UK and loved ones back home in Pakistan. Between the 1960s and 1980s, when international calls were costly and not every elder could read or write letters, recording and posting cassette tapes became the bridge across continents.
Featuring 12 intimate stories from Bradford families, the exhibition blends portrait photography, handwritten quotes, and rare audio recordings drawn from a remarkable archive — one that captures over 200 British-Pakistani voices. These tapes, now housed at London’s Bishopsgate Institute and the National Library of Scotland, are more than just sonic relics — they’re emotional artefacts, steeped in migration, memory, and love.
A Personal Tradition, A Shared Legacy
For many British Muslims, particularly those of Pakistani heritage, the Tape Letters project strikes a chord. Families like that of Asaf Hussain recall sitting around the tape recorder like it was the 9 o’clock news. “For us kids, it was just hearing his voice that mattered,” he says. “Sometimes he’d reply to what we’d said on our last tape, like he was right there with us.”
Asma Mirza, another Bradford contributor, shared a more private side of the story — the emotional intimacy tapes could offer. “There was no cordless phone, and I couldn’t speak to Asim in front of my family,” she remembers. “So he sent me a cassette and said, ‘Tell me what’s in your heart.’ I kept those tapes locked in my suitcase.”
These stories, and many like them, form a mosaic of shared experience — of parents separated from their children, of young love whispered into plastic reels, of joy, grief, and the subtle complexities of identity.
An Act of “Sonic Archaeology”
The exhibition is the brainchild of Wajid Yaseen, founder of Modus Arts, who first discovered the phenomenon through his own family’s history. Since launching the project in 2018, he has described the archive as a kind of “sonic archaeology,” unearthing forgotten communication methods and examining them through the lens of migration, linguistics, class, and belonging.
Yaseen said: “The project demonstrates the deep and inherent need for people to communicate — wherever they’re from or wherever they find themselves in the world.”
His words echo the broader goals of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, which seeks to centre authentic local stories in national conversations around art, history, and identity.
A Culture Carried on Tapes
Shanaz Gulzar, Creative Director of Bradford 2025, shares her own childhood memories of sending tape recordings to family abroad. “Culture Club songs would be interspersed with distant family voices,” she laughs. “Cultural fusion before we knew it.”
Tape Letters is more than just a nostalgic glance at the past. It is a celebration of innovation — of how a community crafted its own way of staying connected long before WhatsApp or FaceTime. It is also a subtle reminder of the emotional intelligence embedded in analogue communication — the tone of voice, the pauses, the laughter, the poetry.
A Visit Worth Making
Tape Letters Bradford is not just for historians or artists — it is for anyone who has ever longed to hear a loved one’s voice again. It’s for children of immigrants, for families divided by geography, and for those curious about the beautiful resilience of communities that found ways to stay human in an era of distance.
Running until 15 June, the exhibition is free to enter and promises an experience that is both moving and uplifting.
Produced by Modus Arts and commissioned by Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, Tape Letters is supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England.
Image: David Lindsay
