London Community Video Archive

Adam Lockhart - Consultancy, recovery and digitisation of material for LCVA archive at DJCAD Media Preservation Lab. Based at Goldsmiths, University of London, the London Community Video Archive (LCVA) will preserve, archive and share community videos made in the 1970s/80s in London and the South East. Portable video recording — now a technology routinely embodied in smartphones — became available for the very first time back in the early 1970s, making it possible for individuals and communities to make their own television. The medium was taken up by people ignored or under-represented in the mainstream media – tenants on housing estates, community action groups, women, black and minority ethnic groups, youth, gay and lesbian people, and the disabled. With an overriding commitment to social empowerment and to combating exclusion, 'Community Video' dealt with issues which still have a contemporary resonance — housing, play-space, discrimination, youth arts. This rich heritage was under threat of disappearing, both because of the physical decay and disintegration of half-inch reel-to reel-tape, and the ageing memories of the original ‘Community Video’ practitioners. LCVA is a project within the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, and was created by two of these video activists: Tony Dowmunt and Andy Porter. It was made possible by the support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, and has been able to archive and digitise a selection of videos from 1970 to 1985, thus recovering and reviving this history so that it can be used as a resource for contemporary debates and activism. In addition, it has conducted 20 oral history interviews with a representative sample of people active in Community Video in the area and is also running an outreach and partnership programme of community screenings and events. Project co-ordinator Tony Dowmunt adds: “Since our 1891 birth in New Cross, Goldsmiths has served and been shaped by our vibrant, ever-changing and growing local community. The 1970s in particular saw an intense and turbulent political climate in Lewisham and across London as a whole. It is vital that we preserve the history of our communities, their ups and downs, struggles and celebrations, for future generations