NewBridge Gallery is now closed until Friday 16 October.
You can join us on 5 September and 3 October for Saturday Social. You can still shop NewBridge Books throughout the weekdays!
“With sound, music, and records, class surfaces time and again, cities and regions thought previously unconnected are connected, women quite literally take centre stage, forms of nationalism outside of political party manifest themselves, and social dynamics are better understood.”
— Christopher Silver, Recording Histories: Jews, Muslims, and Music Across Twentieth-Century North Africa
The Reading Room collaborated with Ellie Armon Azoulay to create an online resource responding to the exhibition Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds.
Pictured below is an in-focus reading list of the books that are available to loan out from our Reading Room. Visit us at NewBridge Project to borrow a book or read in our space.
An expanded reading list can be downloaded as a PDF and contains additional titles added from Ellie Armon Azoulay’s personal collection. Alongside these book titles you’ll also find links to archives, radio shows, articles and zines that explore music as a marker of history and a form of resistance.
Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds was an exhibition curated by Ellie Armon Azoulay as part of our a Programme Committee Season in 2025. This resource has been shaped by suggestions from the artists featured in the exhibition: Majazz: Palestinian Sound Archive, Sara Nacer, Christopher Silver, True Form Projects, Nesh Dadgostar, Arthur Larie and Bastien Massa, Liza Prins and Marie Ilse Bourlanges, Andrea Zarza Canova with the Shieldfield Youth Programme.
Naseej: Life Weavings of Palestine (Pluto Press)
Recording History: Jews, Muslims and Music Across Twentieth-Century North Africa (Stanford University Press)
Sound System: The Political Power of Music (Pluto Press)
Kurdish Women’s Stories (Pluto Press)
Rebel Sounds: Music Resistance (Footnote Press)
My Song Is My Own: 100 Women’s Songs (Pluto Press)
Soundtrack of the Revolution (Stanford University Press)
Resist!: The Art of Resistance (Walther Konig Verlag)
Take This Hammer: Work, Song, Crisis (Goldsmiths Press)
Red and Black in Harlem and Jamaica (Pluto Press)
“Despite ongoing crises in our current time, the works show a capacity for understanding and learning manifest in the aural. What we must do now is listen, increase our awareness, build communities and offer solidarity. What we must do is listen deeper”
— Craig Stewart Johnson (20 Aug 2025): Deep Listening Through Sites of Resistance: Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds at the New Bridge Project, Visual Culture in Britain.
Christie Yung-hei Chan reviews Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds for Corridor8
Craig Stewart Johnson reviews Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds in Visual Culture in Britain
Gharamophone Archive – Christopher Silver
Gnawa Music From Jemaa El Fna Marrakesh (Internet Archive)
Maroc, Marrakech; Musique de confrérie (LESC Crem Centre de Recherche en Enthnomusicologie)
Memories of Traveller Betsy White – Peter Cooke
Music of Morocco – Various Artists (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)
The Sound of Scotland’s Traditions (Tobar An Dualchais)
Zora Neale Hurston and the WPA in Florida (Florida Memory, State Library and Archives of Florida)
The Reading Room is a collaborative project opening up local spaces and providing a wealth of educational tools which will be a catalyst for creative thinkers and critical minds. Our physical library space can be found on the first floor, next to the gallery, and is stocked with thought-provoking books from Pluto Press and Left Book Club.
The Reading Room at NewBridge offers a programme invites artists, authors and researchers to host workshops, screenings and discussions inspired by the books housed in the library. Taking the lead from our communities, the topics of these events may include, the environment, LGBTQ+ issues, structural racism and much more.
Our collection of books continually expands with suggestions from exhibiting artists and the NewBridge Programme Committee.
The NewBridge Project is a charity, registered charity no. 1173849.
We are grateful to our funders, including Arts Council England, Newcastle City Council, Garfield Weston Foundation, Jerwood Foundation, Community Foundation North East, Newcastle University and the The North East Mayoral Strategic Authority.
We are proud to be a Gallery of Sanctuary.
