BOOST SCHEME

Creativeworks London BOOST was a follow on award that was established to enable those businesses and researchers who had previously benefited from Creativeworks London and London Creative and Digital Fusion support. BOOST Awardees were enabled to develop and/or commercialise their ideas through an additional collaborative research project that benefited both the SME(s) involved and the Arts and Humanities research base in London.

Boost

June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive and Birkbeck, University of London

SME Partner

June Givanni, June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive

Academic Partner

Dr Emma Sandon, Birkbeck, University of London

Project Title

Treasures: Developing a Small Pan African Film Archive

Project

Following the success of the Archive Creative Voucher round Moments project, the Treasures project set out to establish an appropriate working model for the archive as a sustainable independent curatorial and archival resource, to work in partnership with a wide range of arts, cultural and educational bodies. The project was based on key collaborative research and development activities that the June Givanni Pan-African Cinema Archive (JGPACA) undertook, with the original HEI partner, Birkbeck, the additional HEI partner UAL, a Business Consultant and a Design consultant, with some input from a legal consultant.   The project sought to develop an innovative business model for a culturally-defined independent audiovisual archive, adding to the profile of small mixed economy cultural archives operating in the UK.  This project would require:  1) the research and development of a model for an independent film archive and 2) the production of a business plan (including intellectual property and digitization strategies), which both lead to the sharing the content of the archive with a range of stakeholders for public benefit. A third project outcome which became necessary in the course of the project development, and that is a research report on space and location considerations for the archive; and the preliminary design of a pop up archive space. Further discussion of the project explored whether this idea could permit the storage of the archive to be separated from the archival cataloguing and management and research space of the archive.

The main findings of the research project are that to become sustainable, the June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive (JGPACA) needs:

  • To register JGPACA as a charity
  • To organise an appropriate structure of governance for the JGPACA charity
  • To engage in a series of funding bids to assist in the process of establishing JGPACA, paying for space and staffing including Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) Start-up grant, Young Roots and Transitional grants and HLF Heritage Grant
  • To apply for funding for activities to the Arts Council and the British Film Festival regional funding
  • To establish appropriate partnerships with public and private institutions
  • To engage in collaborations which enhance the public visibility of JGPACA
  • To take immediate steps to conserve vulnerable sections of the archive
  • To locate an appropriate storage space for the archive, both accessible for pop-up exhibitions and long-term holdings.

There are immediate next steps for the Treasures project beyond the end of the Creativeworks Boost Programme will be the following which are already flowing seamlessly into action to maintain the momentum of this strategic project which will all contribute to the future success of the JGPACA.  The connectin between June GIvanni and the teams at UAL and Birkbeck will also continue, including involvement in the MA in Archive Curating, beginning in 2016.

 

 
Queen Mary - University of London
Arts & Humanities Research Council
European Union
London Fusion

Creativeworks London is one of four Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to develop strategic partnerships with creative businesses and cultural organisations, to strengthen and diversify their collaborative research activities and increase the number of arts and humanities researchers actively engaged in research-based knowledge exchange.