The British Records Association Annual Conference 2024 is being held in partnership with the Association of Performing Arts Collections (APAC), a network for all museums, libraries and archives holding performance arts materials in the UK and Ireland.

Tuesday 29th October 2024

10:15am – 5:00pm

The Gallery, 77 Cowcross Street London EC1M 6EL

The conference theme is active archiving, with, through, and for practitioners. They will explore how archives can be developed in collaboration with the record creators, the practitioners themselves, to create more representative collections of performance for use by practitioners, academics, the general public, and beyond. They will also address current concerns regarding long term preservation of performance archives and the interventions available to save endangered works and collections.

PROGRAMME:

10.15 Welcome from the BRA and from APAC

Widening Access to Collections

10.30 Robyn Greenwood, Collections Manager, and Rachel Sharpe, Head of Co-Curation, Royal Shakespeare Company: Royal Shakespeare Company: Creating Transformation; Co-Curating Collections with Artists, People and Places

10.55 Georgina Donohue, Heritage Officer, Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall Nottingham: Theatre Royal and Royal Concert Hall Nottingham – Heritage Mural Commission with Handmade Theatre

11.20 Maggie Gray, Senior Lecturer in Critical and Historical Studies, and Caoimhe Mader McGuinness, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Kingston University: Engaging Engaged Archives: Revisiting Cartoon Theatre

Records at Risk Panel

12.00-12.05 Introduction from the Chair

Philip Gale, Head of Collections and Cultural Property, and James Hodgson, Head of Archive Sector Funding, The National Archives: Rescuing Performance Arts Archives

Dr Toni Sant, Digital Curation Lab, University of Salford: Questioning Permanence in the Archive: Reflections on the Malta Music Memory Project

12.20 Panel Discussion

12.45-14.00 – Lunch and BRA AGM 13.30-14.00

Collaborative Curation

14.00 Erin Lee, National Theatre and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama: Active Archiving at the National Theatre: Creating a Collection Collaboratively

14.20 Jane Pritchard, Curator of Dance, Victoria & Albert Museum: Collections of Dance and Dancers in the Victoria and Albert Museum

14.40 Dr Barry Houlihan, University of Galway: ‘A Fine Bit of Talk’: A New Digital Oral History Archive of Contemporary Irish Drama

15.00-15.30 Afternoon refreshments

15.30 Sarah C Jane, Archivist (Development Lead), Falmouth University and University of Exeter Penryn Campus: This is Kneehigh: Archive, Legacy, Spirit

15:50 Julian Warren, Head of the Theatre Collection and Sian Williams, Keeper, University of Bristol Theatre Collection: Beyond the Object Entry Form: Some Archival Reflections on Working with Record Creators

16.10 Conference conclusions and close.

Conference fees include full catering for the day. For any accessibility requirements please email: secretary@britishrecordsassociation.org.uk

You can book your ticket here.

Image: The Swan Theatre auditorium at curtain call, 2015. Photo by David Tett © RSC.