SUBMISSION 9
Memorandum submitted by the Heritage Lottery
Fund
INTRODUCTION
The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) is funded by
the National Lottery and receives 4.67p of every pound spent on
Lottery tickets. It is administered by the Trustees of the National
Heritage Memorial Fund which was established under the National
Heritage Act 1980.
As the Select Committee is aware HLF gives grants
to support a wide range of projects involving the local, regional
and national heritage of the United Kingdom. We have supported
a wide range of archive projects throughout the UK. This includes
national archives such as the Public Record Office, regional archives
such as the Yorkshire Film Archive, local record offices such
as that in Oxfordshire, and archives in a wide range of other
institutions. We fund improvements to the housing and storage
of archives, and the conservation, cataloguing and digitisation
of archive material on paper and in other media, in order to improve
access for users and to increase the opportunities for the public
to engage with this part of our heritage. Since 1994 we have made
more than 300 awards totalling more than £102 million for
a range of archive projects.
HLF'S GRANT
TO BFI
The British Film Institute (bfi) is the
UK's national agency for the promotion and development of moving
image culture in all its forms, and is responsible for the National
Film and Television Archive (NFTVA), a collection of international
heritage importance. The collection is housed over a number of
sites and holds more than 3,000,000 titles dating from 1895 to
the present day (including feature films, shorts, animation, documentaries,
amateur films) as well as an extensive collection of related posters,
prints and transparencies. Over many years, the bfi has
accumulated a vast backlog of uncatalogued film and television
video stock, much of which is inappropriately stored and at risk
of destruction due to the environment in which it is stored.
Against this background, in February 1999, HLF
awarded a grant of £13,875,000 (75% of the total project
costs) towards a major film archive conservation project with
public access benefits which was intended to tackle part of the
backlog, identified as a priority by the bfi.
The scope of the project consisted of a mixture
of capital works (the construction of additional archival stores
at the Gaydon site) and revenue elements (the employment of several
teams of staff on fixed-term contracts to process part of the
backlog of archive material, plus associated overhead costs).
The teams were to process the backlog material over a four-year
period.
At the time of the grant award, it was not possible
to precisely define the scope of the revenue aspects of the project
as the exact extent of the backlog was not known. This process
and the bfi's parallel development of a long-term strategy
in consultation with its normal sponsors, as the responsible bodies
for the sector, to deal with the remainder of problems at the
NFTVA were expected to take place during the life of the project.
The project is now satisfactorily complete and
will leave an important legacy that will benefit the NFTVA in
the future. In particular
— Tens of thousands of hitherto unexamined
heritage collections of film will have been processed, preserved
and made accessible to the general public through NFTVA as a result
of this project. Highlights include films of social historical
importance, such as a large collection of the National Coal Board
and Ek Baar Phir (the first Hindi language film shot in the UK).
— The capital elements of the project,
three new state-of-the art storage vaults have been delivered
on time and within budget, ensuring 350 square metres of archive
space.
— Skills and expertise have developed
within the bfi. Elements of the project such as a bar-coding
management system and subject-indexing via the internet will maximise
public access opportunities to the existing and new material within
the NFTVA collection.
Current financial projections show that there
will be major cost savings of approximately £5 million on
the revenue aspects of the project in relation to processing the
eligible backlog. As such HLF has now reduced its overall grant
to the project to £9,149,560 (75% of the revised project
costs).
ISSUES FOR
THE FUTURE
The bfi is a key partner in furthering
the Film Council's education and access agenda. The HLF- funded
project has enabled a greater range and amount of film material
to be accessible through the NFTVA. There is a continuing need
for the bfi to work and maximise the public access benefits
of the project much more that needs to be done both to preserve
the archive and to maximise its contribution to education and
enjoyment of film. Both these require a stable financial framework
for the bfi and one which recognises the need for core
funding and skills to be available.
The bfi needs to address the problems
at the NFTVA, not least the need to substantially improve on unsuitable
environmental conditions under which it has for many years been
storing historically and culturally important film material. There
is a particular problem about the huge backlog of nitrate/acetic
film. Whilst HLF would be prepared to consider an application
in relation to such a project, it would want to do so in the context
of a clear strategy for a stable and sustainable future for the
archive and a longer-term strategy for access and exploitation.
Neither of these currently exist.
CONCLUSION
We recognise that the conservation and opening
up of this internationally important archive is only one element
in the Committee's consideration of the future role of the bfi
and the contribution it could make to education and access to
the moving image. It is nevertheless one which the HLF feels is
sufficiently important to warrant the Committee's consideration
in making recommendations about the Council's future role, responsibilities
and funding.
February 2003
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