Craven Cassette Talking Newspaper, which produces weekly recordings of The Craven Herald and monthly recordings of The Dalesman, recently held a special 40th anniversary celebration, hosted and sponsored by Skipton Building Society. Attendees consisted of many past and present volunteers, blind listeners and others who have assisted the charity over the years.

CRAVEN Cassette always has been a relatively large local charitable organisation with in the order of —50 volunteers of one sort or another at any one time. There has been, and still are, some amazing years of service given by editors, readers, recorders, copiers, committee members and what are now called ‘Post Room’ volunteers.

Peter Longbottom, the first chairman, at the recent anniversary said: “The Talking Newspaper movement, started by a Welsh Round Table, began in the early 1970s and slowly spread out round the country. Early onto the scene was ‘Pendle Voice’ which operated out of Barnoldswick.

“Sometime in the late summer of 1977, a blind retired butcher from Grassington, Harry Binns had a visit from Alan Midgley, his social services worker, and Harry asked why Skipton could not have a Talking Newspaper to record extracts from the Craven Herald. In December, a small group - including Norrie Earl who is with us today - recorded a pilot tape down Airedale Radio studios. Those who heard it deemed it to be success and Alan with others set about raising funds from the likes of Skipton Lions, The Nearly New Shop, anyone else they could think of, including Skipton Round Table.”

A short while later, a committee was formed with Alan as ‘general co-ordinator’ and Peter as chairman, and before the end of the year, ££2,500 had been raised for basic equipment.

In those days, fortnightly recordings were made onto 90 minute ‘master cassettes’ which was then fast copied for distribution, said Peter.

“When I say ‘fast copied’, it took 12 minutes per cycle using our own Tanberg machine, the best quality available. By the first Annual General Meeting, there were 73 Listeners. Slave units were forever being added to the system to reduce the tedious copying but as numbers increased to 150 or so, the copying continued to take hours, much of it done by Alan. Master copier Keith Wright tells me it now takes all of 30 seconds to make numerous copies of a USB Memory Stick.

“Early reading teams included one two from Skipton Little Theatre and Skipton Ladies Circle. By December 1979 there were nine reading teams and weekly editions of Craven Cassette commenced in October, 1980.”

To start with, the tapes were mostly distributed by hand around town.

“The cassettes were delivered back to what is now Cookes Newsagents on Gargrave Road and to a greengrocers in Middletown. The Royal Mail service “Free Post for the Blind” in plastic wallets were heartily welcomed.

“Wollensak copiers speeded up the copying but at a detriment to the quality of the recording, and the life of the cassettes themselves. Donations were never very hard to come by, shaking tins on the High Street, and later supermarkets, was an annual event always supported well by the public. Shaking tins wearing “Craven Cassette” emblazoned tabards gave publicity to what we were doing. There were regular donations too from the likes of the Society of Friends.”

In 2003, the Silver anniversary was celebrated with a lunch at the Craven Heifer with the editor of the Craven Herald, among many others from outside who had helped the group over the years.

“After 25 years of cassettes, Craven Cassette was one of the first talking newspapers to take the decision to convert to digital and, Richard Breare, with a little help from outside, including Skipton Building Society, got the system up and running with a marked improvement in the quality of recording. As the system became out of my depth I was delighted when Richard took over the chairmanship in 2010,” said Peter.

In around 2005 digital recording was discussed to replace what was proving inadequate tape reproduction, said Richard.

“We were encouraged by Peter White, blind correspondent of the BBC, who said something along the lines of “don’t let the listener perceived reluctance to change to cover for your own” - test quality of reproduction was good so we decided to go ahead,”he said.

“Again Skipton Building Society came to the fore with one of their lead technical men Kevin Hall helping set up our system and baling me out with teething problems. I looked at the reading teams and concluded a lot of help would be needed on the changeover and with no one else prepared or able to commit what proved to be a 12 month learning curve, I began three hour weekly recording sessions. I soon realised the sophisticated recording software was a step too far for many and having attended a national conference with Peter we acquired the current simple system. We have replaced hardware in the following decade but the software works well.”

The monthly Dalesman magazine is now read by Cath and Neil Wilson.

“Bringing their love of nature, with outside recording in the recent heatwave and the background sound of birds and their beloved bees, and terminology in their introductions such as “nithering” befitting of a magazine for The Dales. They have even added the Cumbria magazine each month which goes out on the same USB stick as The Dalesman,” said Richard.

One of the charity’s problems remains recruiting new listeners - North Yorkshire’s Social Services department has in the past supplied many leads, but that source seems to have dried up, perhaps, says Richard, due to care now being passed on to commercial firms.

“However link formed with Vision Support Harrogate District has helped. They go into blind and partially sighted people’s houses in the Harrogate, Ripon, Knaresborough and Pateley Bridge areas and give constructive help. It now includes putting them in touch with CCTN and has probably tripled the number of listeners that take the Dalesman,” said Richard.

Anyone interested in getting free audio recordings of the Craven Herald, or Dalesman, or knows someone who would be interested, can telephone Richard on 01756 794298 or email him on r.breare@btopenworld.com. The charity also needs new volunteers to assist with reproduction of recordings - not readers for which they have adequate teams- and also looking to the future a listener liaison officer to take over from Peter Longbottom who has undertaken this role since standing down as chairman in 2010. Having given 40 years of service he intends to retire from the Charity in 2020. Both tasks require the volunteer to have a car.