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 for the JISC Digitisation project, for all the wonderful support and advice, which we received from him during the 28 months of the project.
University of East London (UEL)
The ELTA project was led by the University of East London. UEL is a global learning community, with over 21,000 students from 110 countries world-wide. We are a successful and inclusive University proud of our diversity, committed to new modes of learning which focuses on students and enhance their employability, and renowned for our contribution to social, cultural and economic development, locally, nationally and internationally, especially through our research and advanced scholarship. We have a strong track-record in widening participation and working with industry. For further information please see the UEL website.
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. 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 , while freelance photographer Jamie Lumley was commissioned by ELTA to provide architectural images of the aforesaid theatres' buildings. UEL's own Archive Department yielded additional material relating to Hackney Empire, and also for touring political company Cartoon Archetypical Slogan Theatre (CAST) .
While UEL identified and digitised a small handful of 19th century playbills relating to Hoxton Hall, the majority of material digitised by UEL dates from the 1970s to 2008. 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. UEL project team looked for an established digitisation company that could provide excellent digitisation services and choose after a thorough tendering process to take on Max Communications Limited, which digitised all of the smaller partners' sourced materials.
UEL also commissioned the eminent building historian John Earl to use his expertise write a contextual essay about the history of East London theatre, which can be found on the website's Themes page.
UEL Project Team
The UEL Project Team went through several project management changes. This can be detrimental to a project. However for ELTA it has worked out very positively towards the completion of the project. The project board took the opportunity in focusing on what the next phase of the project would require, the management felt in the last stage that it would be best to second someone from the LLS staff that had the experience and would stay beyond the completion of the project. This decision was taken for the continuous enhancement of ELTA and sustainability. This has worked out very well and in favour to our ELTA project.
- Professor Andrew McDonald, Project Director and Director of Library and Learning Services
- Gurdish Sandhu, Associate Director of Library and Learning Services
- Mark O'Thomas, Creative Project Director
- Gavin Beattie, ELTA Project Manager until May 2007
- Judith Preece, LLS Campus Manager and Acting ELTA Project Manager until June 2007
- Philip Jones, Acting ELTA Project Manager from June - August 2007, then Project Officer until August 2008
- Zoë Browne, ELTA Project Manager, August 2007 - November 2008
- Yvonne Klein, ELTA Project Manager from October 2008 to present
- Rachel Graham, Project Officer from December 2008 to March 2009
- Mark Hunter, member of Advisory Panel and Acting Creative Director from Sep 2008 to January 2009
- Ananda Breed, Senior Lecturer at UEL and the Theatre networks students
- Ilse Bergendorff-Evans, organising CAST and Hackney Empire material and the archive
- Lim L Wan, Accountant, UEL Finance department
V&A Theatre Collections
One of three core project partners, 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.
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.
East London Theatre Archive
