Talking Newspapers is appealing for more volunteers to join its ranks.

Every week, the Tameside Talking Newspaper records news items from the Tameside Reporter for the benefit of blind and visually disabled residents in the borough.

Teams of dedicated volunteers meet on Thursday afternoons in their recording studio in Dukinfield Town Hall to read items from the paper.

After the Covid pandemic, the number of volunteer teams had to be reduced from four to three and the number of volunteer readers on each team also had to be reduced.

The Tameside Talking Newspaper Association had been issuing audio recordings of the local news every week since their inception in 1978.

Only the pandemic forced a pause in recordings but the service was able to return to the airwaves exactly a year ago after the lockdowns meant the volunteers were unable to visit their studios.

The charity exists solely on donations made to them.

Their original recordings were issued on cassettes to just 25 people in the Tameside area but a decade ago, they switched to digital memory sticks. Over the years, they have recorded the news in a wide variety of locations including, for a few years, over a doctor’s surgery.

But thanks to Tameside Council, they now have the studio in Dukinfield Town Hall.

More recently, because several of the volunteers are elderly, recordings have sometimes only been made by only two people in the studio.

The Talking Newspaper Association is, therefore, looking for volunteers willing and able to spend a couple of hours on a Thursday afternoon in the town hall reading from our local paper once every three weeks.

No previous experience is necessary and anyone interested is asked to ring Sylvia on (0161) 430 7392 or Ian on (0161) 320 0659. 

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