Blog: Conservation in Action

Lucy Picardo Lunchtime Conservation Tour
Lucy Picardo, Renew project architect Conservation in action Tour

As Chichester Festival Theatre has been tucked away behind hoardings undergoing its intense period of restoration and improvement, we at Pass It On have been charged with providing the public with as much access to, and information about, what’s going on back there as possible. To this end, over the course of this summer we ran a short series of lunch time tours around the hoardings with RENEW Project Architect, Lucy Picardo.

On three sunny afternoons between July and September, 15 lucky people spent 45 minutes with Lucy talking them through the works taking place, catching glimpses of various aspects of the project through the windows in the hoardings before ending up on first floor level platform overlooking the site.

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Blog: Collecting memories of CFT

Memory Collection taking place at the Barnum Matinee
Memory Collection taking place at Barnum Matinee

Memory Collection events have now been conducted with Barnum Audiences and most recently at Chichester Library where Youth Theatre members conducted short interviews with members of the public about their memories of the Theatre. These events have yielded some fascinating insights, stories and memories about time spent at the Theatre, with many people talking to us who have been coming back for many years, some since the Theatre’s foundation.

Pass It On hopes to hold several more of these events and in doing so collect further memories from many different people who have had some connection with the Theatre over the decades, not only past directors, actors or staff, but people who came to see a show or those who remember the impact the Theatre has had on Chichester and the surrounding area over its history.

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Blog: Work Experience on the Pass It On project

 

1971 Chichester Festival Theatre programme cover
1971 Chichester Festival Theatre programme cover

My six weeks work placement on the Pass It On Heritage Lottery funded project has been a grand experience for me as a student from Germany. The time has flown by while working at Chichester Festival Theatre and West Sussex Record Office, the archive which collects and preserves the documents and recorded heritage of West Sussex.

The project team provided me with a very special task of sorting the entire Chichester Festival Theatre programmes dating from the theatre beginnings in 1962 up to the present. The programmes included the main house and Minerva productions and consequently added up to a huge amount. At the beginning the task did not seem easily manageable, but once I worked my way into it I grew fond of being in charge of such an important and interesting part of the Pass It On project.

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