East London Theatre Archive

Background

JISC

JISC is the Joint Information Systems Committee of the UK further and higher education funding bodies. It is responsible for supporting the innovative use of information and communication technology (ICT) to support learning, teaching, and research. It provides a national network, a range of support, content and advisory services, as well as a portfolio of high-quality resources. Information about JISC, its services and programmes can be found at its website.

The ELTA Project was funded by Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), as part of JISC's Digi-2 Programme. We would like to thank Alastair Dunning, Programme Manager of the JISC Digitisation project, for his support and advice.

University of East London (UEL)

The UEL project team were responsible for the surveying, selection and creation of 4,601 images of archive material and related metadata sourced from a number of different collections, as well as digitisation. Much of the digitised material is still held at various East London locations by the originating bodies, namely:

• Hackney Empire
• Half Moon Young People's Theatre
• Hoxton Hall
• Theatre Royal Stratford East
• Theatre Venture
• Wilton's Music Hall

UEL also sourced images from the private archive collection of building historian John Earl ; UEL's Archives provided material from Hackney Empire, and touring political company Cartoon Archetypical Slogan Theatre (CAST) . Freelance photographer Jamie Lumley was also commissioned to provide architectural images of the aforesaid theatres' buildings.

The majority of material digitised by UEL dates from the 1970s to 2008 with the exception of a small number of 19th century playbills from Hoxton Hall. The surveying process revealed that, with the exception of items sourced from Theatre Royal Stratford East, little material dating from before the 1970s had survived the passage of time. The UEL project team also coordinated digitisation, opting after a thorough tendering process to take on Max Communications Limited, which digitised all of the smaller partners' sourced materials.

UEL also commissioned the building historian John Earl to write an essay about the history of East London theatre, which can be found on the website's Themes page.

Centre for e-Research (CeRch)

The Centre for e-Research (CeRch) at King's College London was the technical partner for ELTA. Its staff devised the metadata requirements used by UEL and V&A, and processed the individual item descriptions into MODS format. The metadata and images were ingested into a Fedora Commons digital repository in line with the OAIS reference standard, to offer the project a sustainable archive with strong digital preservation capabilities. The MODS metadata and image files were packaged together using METS and extra preservation metadata was added. Public versions of the images were created from the masters. This website was designed by Daisy Abbott and built at CeRch, making use of the data in the repository and additional content such as the thematic essays.

V&A Theatre Collections

The V&A Theatre Collections team contributed over 10,000 images and related catalogue records to the ELTA project.

What are the V&A Theatre Collections?

The V&A Theatre Collections operated under the title `Theatre Museum' between 1974 and 1987, and for 20 years between 1987 and 2007, were based at the Theatre Museum building in Covent Garden. They have always been a part of the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) and now have dedicated Theatre & Performance galleries there, plus a collections centre and research facilities at the Museum's premises in Kensington Olympia

The Theatre Collections first entered the V&A in 1924, when their founder, Gabrielle Enthoven, gifted her large collection of theatrical artefacts and ephemera to the museum. That initial donation attracted many other very significant gifts from organisations such as the British Theatre Museum Association, the Society for Theatre Research, the London Archives of the Dance, and the British Drama League.

The Theatre Collections are designated as the UK's national collection for the performing arts. They cover all the live performing arts, and encompass a wide variety of physical formats, including stage cloths, costumes, photographs, paintings, a library, designs, prints and substantial archive collections.

Scope and Content

The Theatre Collections are particularly strong in theatre programmes and playbills, and current programmes are actively collected from over 200 UK theatres, adding to the half a million already in the collections, covering British Theatre from the early 18th century onwards. The material digitised for the ELTA project is selected from our material on East London, and includes a large number of such playbills, mainly relating to the Britannia Theatre, Pavilion Theatre and the Standard Theatre. In addition smaller batches of items from a number of other East London theatres were also digitised, including Bow Palace, Blackfriars Theatre, Dalston Theatre, East Ham Palace and Stratford Empire. The date range is from circa 1827 up to the mid-1930s.

Aside from these items, other material digitised for the ELTA website includes press cuttings, 1970s archaeological photographs of Wilton's Music Hall, 19th century playtexts, a scrapbook for the Brunswick Theatre (1828), selected London Pavilion Engagement books, a review book of variety acts from the London Pavilion Company, issues of The Performer magazine, and Frank Matcham architectural plans for Hackney Empire.

V&A ELTA Project Team

• Claire Hudson - Project management
• Guy Baxter - Metadata standards mapping and conservation input
• Louise Grainger - Chief project officer, documentation and image sourcing
• Henrietta Clare - Digital photography
• Becky Howell - Documentation and mapping
• Catherine Haill - Thematic essays

Research Access

Enquiries about the V&A Theatre Collections should be directed to TMenquiries@vam.ac.uk.

Further information about the Theatre Collections is available at www.vam.ac.uk/theatre

East London Theatre Archive