KEIGHLEY people who sent cassette tapes back and forth to relatives in Pakistan are being sought by researchers.

The Tape Letters Project aims to highlight the social history of the method used by people of Pakistani origin to keep in touch.

Some families who settled in Bradford district from the 1960s onward recorded themselves on cassette rather than writing or using the telephone.

The tapes were sent backwards and forwards with news of how relatives were getting on with life in the West or back in the home country.

The volunteer researchers now want to hear people’s reminiscences about the method, as well as listen to any surviving tapes. Tape Letters was highlighted as part of Bradford South Asian Heritage Month.

Keighley councillor Zafar Ali, who came to Keighley from Pakistan as a boy, recalled that some people used cassettes in the 1960s to send family news.

He said: “They would tape everyone who lived here – sons, daughters, fathers, wives – and tell relatives how they were doing.

“It wasn’t a huge practice in Keighley. People in Keighley asked friends to pass on letters when they went back to visit Pakistan. In 1967 my family sent me a telegram to say they were coming to Keighley and needed picking up from the airport.”

A South Asian Heritage Month spokesman said that so far most of the reminiscences were from Bradford people, but they wanted to hear from families across the entire district.

She said: “Tape Letters is an oral history project examining the use of cassette tapes as an alternative mode of long-distance communication by Pakistani and British-Pakistani families between 1960 and 1980. Drawing entirely both from first-hand interviews and from the informal and intimate conversations on the cassettes the project seeks to unearth, archive and represent a portrait of this unusual method of communication.

“The project comments on individual experiences of migration and identity, on the unorthodox use of cassette tape technology, and on the languages (such as Potwari) used in the recordings.”

Anyone who wants to get involved should email hello@tapeletters.com.