Memorandum submitted by the Film Archive
Forum
The Film Archive Forum is the representative
body for the UK's public sector moving image archives. Its members
include the British Film Institute's National Film and Television
Archive, the Scottish Screen Archive, the National Screen and
Sound Archive of Wales, the Imperial War Museum Film and Video
Archive, and the eight film archives covering the English regions.
The Forum represents the UK's public sector moving image archives
in all archival aspects of the moving image, and acts as the advisory
body on national moving image archive policy.
This letter is to draw attention to the perilous
position facing the public sector regional film archives of England
(RFAs) and to urge that the new Heritage White Paper acknowledges
their value to the nation's heritage and recognises that these
archives can only prosper if they can benefit from a new national
film archive policy and strategy. Our hope its that the White
Paper will shape the process that will begin to use new investment
to unlock their immense cultural potential.
The collections of the RFAs contain nearly 300,000
items. They include regional television programmes, news broadcasts,
newsreels, industrial films, documentaries, advertising films,
travelogues, artist's film and video, campaign films, educational
films, and home movies, from the end of the nineteenth-century
to the present day. Over the past year, we estimate that over
30,000 people attended screenings presented by these archives,
over 1.4 million people attended exhibitions in museums and public
spaces featuring moving images from these collections, and thirty
million people viewed footage from our collections in regional
and national television broadcasts.
As identified by Peter Boyden in his recent
report devoted to an audiovisual archive strategy for the Midlands,
the moving image archive sector can deliver a range of benefits
to the nation:
Cultural Benefit
The moving image provides a dynamic documentary
record of social change, giving film archives the capacity to
educate and to build community identity. It provides a unique
record of the changing nature of our culture and of the role of
creativity within it. Without a commitment to professional film
archives that serve as the stewards of this heritage and makes
it accessible to the widest possible number of people, we, as
a nation, cannot make use and sense of this unique cultural history.
This is especially true in an emerging digital era.
Economic Benefit
Moving image archive material also makes a contemporary
contribution to the creative industries that drive large sections
of the knowledge economy. It therefore has a continuing economic
impact through the very industries from which it draws much of
its primary material. By making this material available for commercial
use, it strengthens its own capacity to function in a "mixed
economy". More importantly, it also feeds back into a virtuous
cycle in which the mainstream popularity of programmes featuring
archive material increases public engagement with the past and
generates the education, community development and cultural benefits
outlined above and below.
Educational Benefit
Education (and lifelong learning) have become
the integrating principle which links and drives the cultural
activity beneath the DCMS policy umbrella. The nature of moving
image material gives it a unique power to communicate across generations,
engage emotions and inform understanding. It can represent the
reality of lived experience and therefore, in a very real sense,
it has the ability to open a window on the past through which
we can better understand the present and make informed choices
about the future.
Social Benefit
Developing coherent communities built on a sense
of both collective and distinctive identities is a primary concern
of government. Film archives can play a major role in the "democratisation'
of historical studies and archival resources, especially by the
ability of these collections to represent the many histories of
place, region and nation. This has been recognised by the Archives
Task Force's report, Listening to the Past, Speaking to the
Future, which showcased community projects built around the
digitisation and networking of personal reminiscence, photographs,
and other audio-visual resources. Diversity and social inclusion
agendas are thus directly and effectively addressed.
POLICY AND
STRATEGY
The national body with responsibilty for the
regional film archives of England is the UK Film Council (UKFC).
Since its creation in 2000, and until recently, it expressed little
interest in the preparation of either policy or strategy of relevance
to the development of this archive sector and undertook no effective
advocacy on the sector's behalf. (The CMS Committee's report of
2003 on the British film industry drew attention to our understanding
of this very real problem.) As a result, these English archives
have been financially stranded at the margins of public policy.
In the absence of a national strategy, there has been no coherent
pattern of regional investment and development and no sustained
revenue support.
For 2005-06, the total annual revenue funding
for all eight of these archives amounts to approximately £260,000.
This is the funding that flows from the UKFC through the regional
screen agencies to the archives. No other archive sector in the
country receives such a small amount of state funding.
Through their public activities, the RFAs demonstrate
very clearly their ability to deliver both key UK Film Council
and DCMS strategic objectives. However, these archives cannot
continue to operate with such low levels of revenue funding. Their
sustainability is now at risk, as is their ability to seek additional,
project-based investment and to provide regional access to regional
collections for a diverse range of audiences.
We estimate that £1.4 million per annum,
distributed across the English regional film archives, would revitalise
and revolutionise these archives and enable them to create significant
learning opportunities, contribute to social well-being and fully
participate in the digital age. This figure was contained within
the paper on the RFAs that we commissioned and sent to the DCMS
in May 2005.
Since 2002, the Museums, Libraries and Archives
Council (MLA) has been involved in supporting the creation of
a developmental strategy for the audiovisual archives sector in
the UK. The first stage of this work culminated in 2004 with the
publication of Hidden Treasures: The UK Audiovisual Archive
Strategic Framework (the outcome of a consultancy funded by
MLA) and the publication of the DCMS-commissioned Archives Task
Force's report, Listening to the Past, Speaking to the Future.
Researched by MLA, the latter agrees with our own findings
that "because of a lack of public policies designed to provide
a strategic framework for the development and sustainability of
the audiovisual archive sector, it has not benefitted from the
same kind of public investment in its preservation, documentation
and its availability to the publiç.
Following on from these MLA initiatives, the
UKFC convened a Film Heritage Group in early 2004, to begin to
shape a relevant strategy and advocacy campaign to benefit the
English regional film archives. Now being chaired by the British
Film Institute, its Moving Image Heritage: National Strategy
Paper (2005) does offer some hope. It proposes an integrated
approach in which the bfi takes a national lead while committing
to an active partnership with the RFAs. The paper proposes a "twelve-month
specification project" for the creation of a new national
digital archive network and acknowledges the financial threat
that faces the RFAs. A case is made for an additional £485k
to be applied in the 2006-07 to "stabilise" the RFAs.
The case for new public investment for the RFAs
that has been made by this new initiative and by the archives
themselves has not yet been accepted by government. Although the
arguments have been articulated repeatedly, the RFAs remain under-valued
and under-resourced. The long-term confusion over the nature and
location of public responsibility for its national and regional
funding remains an overriding issue.
Our interest is in how these two strands of
action (MLA and UKFC/bfi) can be brought together to institute
a positive and constructive dialogue on how best to build a sustainable
future for the English regional film archives.
Our belief is that this funding crisis cannot
be resolved and new opportunities for the regional film archives
cannot be created until there is the recognition that:
— the work of the public sector moving
image archives falls as much within the domain of national heritage
as within the creative industries;
— they need to be supported by national
organisations that are committed to nurturing and developing these
archives for the benefit of the UK, its nations and regions;
— they should receive the same level
of annual investment as found in similar heritage organisations
within the public sector.
Enclosed is our vision for the UK's public sector
moving image archives.
We also recommend that this Select Committee
gives serious attention to the National Council on Archives' recent
publication, Giving Value: Funding Priorities for UK Archives
2005-2010. The Film Archive Forum fully subscribes to its
emphasis on five key priority areas for public sector archive
investment: Online Access, Engaging New Audiences, Sustainable
Development, Interpretation and Excellence and Innovation.
OUR VISION FOR THE UK PUBLIC SECTOR MOVING
IMAGE ARCHIVES
THE VISION
— a UK national moving image network
becomes a reality—a secure and mutually-supportive network
for the long-term preservation and dissemination of the national
moving image heritage, with interlinked catalogues and associated
digitised films and resources from these archives available twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week;
— these public archives are recognised
and valued for the role they successfully play in firing people's
imagination, learning and curiosity;
— the collections of these archives
are properly preserved and documented;
— the archives proactively package/curate
their collections for on-line delivery in order to benefit different
users and audiences (eg national curriculum, Higher and Further
Education, life-long learning, reminiscence, the young and communities);
— the existence of welcoming and well-serviced
moving image archive visitor centres with viewing copies, on-line
access, reference materials and professional archive staff;
— creative/cultural and commercial
partnerships routine and embedded, especially between these archives
and cinemas, museums, archives, libraries, state education, Higher
and Further Education, and the media industries;
— the English regional film archives
are funded on a par with county record offices in order to provide
stable, sustainable and responsive services.
What changes are required in order to realise
this vision?
— a strategic understanding of the
resourcing of moving image archive preservation and access;
— sustainable core funding for the
English archives;
— new investment in preservation, digitisation,
on-line services and access initiatives;
— a national framework of institutional
provision which lays out national and regional responsibilities
and provides comprehensive coverage for moving image archive activity;
— these archives defined as centres
of expertise and their collections are collectively defined as
a distributed national collection which is widely accessible to
a diverse community of users;
— the regional and national moving
image archives to share a compatible documentation system;
— the creation of the first national
moving image catalogue.
17 January 2006
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