Arts Council of Great Britain: records, 1928-1997

Series description

Context

In the early 1940s, the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) sent touring theatre productions to munitions and industrial hostels throughout England and Wales as well as to halls in mining areas. At the end of the war, it seemed to the Council that these tours would no longer be needed and so the initiative was halted. After a year without touring product, there were calls for theatre tours from people living in isolated areas, mainly in Wales and north-eastern England. In 1947, the practice of sending out tours was re-started by the Arts Council in association with the Miners’ Welfare Association. At first, these Arts Council tours of theatreless areas were undertaken by companies specially created and financed for the purpose. From 1955, however, the Council invited independent managements to provide touring companies for which it would continue to take financial responsibility.

Scope and content

This series incorporates Drama Department series ACGB/T and two boxes of material that were not labelled ACGB/T but have very similar contents. It includes production programmes dating from the period when the CEMA was overseeing tours as well as statistical and / or touring policy documents and details of specific touring productions. The files concerning statistics and / or policy have been listed first. These typically contain balance sheets, correspondence, internal memos and reports, reference material and tour schedules. Next come files concerning specific productions, which typically contain cast lists and biographies, details about receiving houses and local accommodation, details of grants and / or guarantees, itineraries, printed publicity material, newspaper cuttings and show reports. In this group, there are also files that hold the statements of account for these (and other) touring productions. The non-ACGB/T material is listed last.

Arrangement

The files in this series are arranged chronologically within each of the three distinct groups identified above: statistical and / or policy documents, touring productions and / or production returns, and non-ACGB/T material.

Access

General information on access to archives at the V&A is available on the archive pages of the V&A website.

Restrictions on access

Access to some unpublished material may be restricted and requests for access can take up to 20 working days to be processed. When applying for access, it is helpful if you can quote the reference number, title and covering dates of the file(s) in question. For very large requests you are advised to contact us to discuss your requirements. All requests should be sent to archive@vam.ac.uk or Victoria and Albert Museum Archives (ref. ACGB), Blythe House, 23 Blythe Road, London W14 0QX.

Detailed catalogue