Arts Council of Great Britain: records, 1928-1997

Series description

Context

The Arts Council's commitment to touring productions of ballet, theatre and opera dates from its earliest days, when it inherited the war-time work of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA). In 1970, the Council took over the formerly independent Dramatic and Lyric Theatre Association (DALTA) and appointed its director, Jack Phipps, to organise tours. Since that time, touring schemes were run either by a specially-created Touring Department or by the Regional Department, which, at key points in its history, was placed in charge of touring operations. Following a major restructuring in 1985/86, Touring was re-established as a separate department. It viewed audience development as central to fulfilling the Council's chartered objective to "increase the accessibility of the arts to the public." In a nationwide bid to expand audiences and increase attendances, the Touring Department worked alongside the Regional Arts Associations / Regional Arts Boards and a large network of marketing agencies on a programme of audience development.

Scope and content

The files in this series concern various Regional Arts Associations / Regional Arts Boards, a number of generic research projects and / or generalised marketing strategies and related information (e.g. Black Dance Research Project, Middle-Scale Dance or Senior Marketing Officer's Correspondence), and a wide range of dance, mime and theatre companies. Typically, these files contain marketing strategies and reports, development plans, audience questionnaires and the summaries of survey findings, press releases and / or press packs, printed publicity material, and national press reviews, correspondence, tour schedules and tour returns. In addition, some files contain minutes from meetings, grant applications and offers, company appraisals and annual reports. Some of the files concerning regional arts include the relevant Association and Board names in their titles because their contents cover the periods before and after the organisational shift from Association to Board that affected all Regional Arts Associations in the early 1990s.

For Regional Arts Associations / Regional Arts Boards see ACGB/108 and ACGB/109.

Arrangement

The files in this series are arranged alphabetically within each of the three major sequences: Regional Arts, Generic Projects / General, and Theatre / Dance Companies.

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