BFI awarded £249,389 grant by The National Lottery Heritage Fund to implement ‘Audit to Access’ project

The BFI has received a grant for ‘Audit to Access’ from The National Lottery Heritage Fund. The major two-year project (which officially began earlier this month) provides the funding needed to undertake an audit of un-accessioned paper collections connected to film and screen heritage, preserved at the BFI National Archive Conservation Centre. Made possible by National Lottery players, ‘Audit to Access’ is a large-scale project contributing to opening up access to the national collection: a long-term ambition set out in the BFI’s 10 year strategy, Screen Culture 2023.

The project will help lay the groundwork of vital new collections management knowledge and large scale audit systems. Undertaking an essential review of un-accessioned paper collections will help the BFI Knowledge, Learning and Collections teams continue to build their understanding of the national collection; to determine its conservation needs; to identify new archival narratives and to uncover previously hidden and unknown histories within our archived screen heritage.

The £249,389 grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund enables the BFI to recruit a team to deliver a strategic collection review for a subset of the BFI National Archive’s paper collections. This includes two Paper Audit Assistants and a Data Records Specialist to carry out an end-to-end box level audit of these collections. It will ensure an accurate inventory for planning and developing collections management strategies, to deliver continued care for — and ultimately enable greater access to — the national collection for the British public. The survey will provide a more complete picture of these collections than we’ve ever had before.

‘Audit to Access’ supports the BFI’s responsibility to understand and interpret the BFI National Archive collections of film, television and the moving image, in order to meet the public’s clear interest in engaging with their screen heritage. The second year of the project will see recruitment for a freelance Volunteer and Outreach consultant to help develop opportunities for community volunteers to engage with collection review activity.

In recent years the BFI has acquired papers by leading filmmakers including Gurinder Chadha (Bend It like Beckham, It’s a Wonderful Afterlife); one of UK’s most prolific female feature filmmakers, documentary filmmaker John Krish, whose films included work for the National Coal Board, the General Post Office, and the Central Office of Information; as well as innovative artist filmmaker, Nichola Bruce. The Archive is also home to material relating to hidden or key crew and craft roles, such as BAFTA winning casting director Mary Selway (Love Actually, Gosford Park) and Joy Maxwell Davis (Never Let Me Go), who occupied the little-known role of an on-set medic. It is hoped that this project will help to surface more of these hidden hands and minds that go into UK filmmaking.

Helen Edmunds, director of Collections Operations, BFI National Archive said, “We are thrilled to have received this support thanks to The National Lottery Heritage Fund and ultimately National Lottery players. This project will help us understand more about the unique BFI National Archive paper collections, their care needs and open up access to create opportunities with volunteer communities to help us uncover and spotlight previously hidden stories of UK filmmaking culture” 

Arike Oke, executive director of Knowledge, Learning and Collections, said “By discovering more about the collections in the BFI National Archive that exist in paper and non-moving image formats, we’ll discover more stories and treasures that helps us to reframe the public’s relationship with the nation’s screen heritage, helping the BFI National Archive move into a future in which there are more opportunities for work with, creative use of and public access to the national collections.”