A unique file relating to the planning of
the 1951 Festival of Britain is now accessible online for the very
first time.
The file comprises almost three hundred pages of documentation that
offer unprecedented insight into the planning of the Homes and Gardens
Pavilion, and is one of 77 files held in the Design Council Archive at
University of Brighton relating to this national event. A key resource
for researchers, this rich set of correspondence, memoranda, plans, and
sketches is now visible to scholars around the world.
The digitisation work was undertaken as part of the JISC-funded
Look-Here! project during 2010 in anticipation of the 60th anniversary
of the Festival of Britain this year. The file can be accessed via the Visual
Arts Data Service (VADS) and compliments the 3200
images already available online from the Design Archives at
University of Brighton. For more information, and to view all of the
digitised collections from the archive, see:
http://www.vads.ac.uk/collections/DCA
The file can also be accessed as part of the multi-level description of
the Design Council Archive available on the Archives
Hub
The Look-Here! project, which was led by VADS in collaboration with
nine partners across the arts education sector, sought to develop
skills and strategies for digitisation within libraries, museums, and
archives in the arts education community. One of the outputs of the
project was a series of digitisation case studies by project partners,
including a case study on the digitisation of the Festival of Britain
documentation, which can be found on the project website at: http://www.vads.ac.uk/lookhere/casestudies