Towards an Oral History of Performance and Live Art in the British Isles: An Introduction

Respondent or information from other source:
Claire MacDonald, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design

Aims, policies, purpose/impetus for project:
Project has thus far run a year-long workshop series aimed to prepare the ground for a major new project that will interrogate and document the voices of artists, curators, arts administrators, producers, critics, spectators and writers who have contributed to the field of live art and performance since the mid 1960s, when non-mainstream performance and time-based art began to be recognized as a significant part of art practice.
We have chosen to work with oral history as one of the ways of generating and archiving a history of live art and performance, for many reasons. Oral history has developed, over the past forty years, into a highly nuanced and sophisticated discipline that is committed to questioning singular historical accounts, acknowledging the variety of subjectivities and actively encouraging multiple narratives. It is essentially dialogic, and therefore particularly useful in relation to events and social movements where material evidence is lacking, and where multiple witness accounts are significant.
The workshops are consultative working days, intended to enable people with a knowledge of the artistic field, and of archival and curatorial practices, to share the kinds of ideas, experiences and knowledge that will help to shape a large scale project.

Dates: 2007

Key individuals and roles involved:
AHRC workshop funding has enabled us to bring together a collaborative Steering Group. Claire MacDonald, of Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, and Stephen Cleary, of the British Library, initiated the project. Sara Jane Bailes (Department of English, University of Sussex) Dee Heddon (Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, University of Glasgow) and Angela Piccini, (Department of Drama: Theatre, Film, Television, University of Bristol) are contributing their institutional and individual areas of expertise and interest across the field, and share a commitment to exploring the methodological, research design and intellectual issues involved in setting up and archiving an oral history of the field.

Paid or voluntary, training in oral history:

Project funded by:
AHRC - they are about to re-submit a (requested) revised budget for the full Phase 2 project and will know in Sept if successful

Management of project:

Format of interviews:
None undertaken so far - they will constitute Phase 2, subject to successful fundraising

How interviewees are selected and located:

Interview running time:

Copyright in interviews. Assignment rights?:

Location of interview copies. Accessibility to public/format:

Collection contact details/website:

Interview transcripts/lists of topics or other content indexes:

Cataloguing:

Future plans for project/interviews?:

Materials used for publications, exhibitions, conferences, radio/TV programmes or performances etc or future plans for this?:

Project website: Sounding Performance

List on a joint (possibly STR) website:

Join listserv/emailing list/forum:

Further information:

List of interviewees provided: N/A