Blog – Page 3 – Pass It On

Blog: Categories

Blog: Conservation in Action

Posted: October 3, 2013May 8, 2014 | by CFT | Filed under: | Tags:

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

Posted: September 19, 2013May 23, 2014 | by CFT | Filed under:

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

Posted: September 10, 2013May 15, 2014 | by CFT | Filed under: | Tags:

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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Blog: How we are getting on in the archive

Posted: August 8, 2013May 8, 2014 | by CFT | Filed under: | Tags:

Our first two groups of archive organisation volunteers. Left Photo clockwise from the top: John, Samphire, Steph, Maggie and Percy. Right Photo clockwise from the top: Rachel, Jackie, Barbara, Christine, Anne and Sue.

Gillian is working with teams of volunteers in the West Sussex Record Office to sort through and list the 1,000 boxes of paper files which constitute 50 years’ worth of potential material for the Chichester Festival Theatre’s archive – the keystone of the Pass It On project. As the first team of volunteers finish their term, Gillian reflects on the initial three months of organising our archive:

It’s the end of a little era. The first two teams to sort and box documents and files belonging to the Chichester Festival Theatre have now completed their time. They have done sterling work and I shall miss them.
We have made excellent progress. We are attempting to separate all the paperwork relating to the history and development of the Theatre from that which is perhaps not so significant and needs only to be kept for a short time. The newly sorted documents will become the new Chichester Festival Theatre archive, to be stored at West Sussex Record Office and will eventually be available for viewing by the public.

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Blog: Why Collect Oral History?

Posted: July 26, 2013May 23, 2014 | by CFT | Filed under: | Tags:

Photograph of Theatre staff from the Daily Mail 1963

The past is ‘This happened’ and then ‘This happened’ and then ‘This happened’, isn’t it? The past: a series of events, a series of dates even. If we want to make sense of the past we can choose moments from it, try to sort out which moments are important, and link them – this led to this, this led to this, and this led absolutely nowhere (history as a basic theatre plot, if you like).

If we’re ambitious, we might even try to give past events some sort of meaning. Perhaps this event displayed a spirit of innovation; this showed a certain courage and this then revealed a sad timidity.

Much of the data we can gain is from written records. In the case of Chichester Festival Theatre, the records are extensive. There are all the contracts with directors, writers, actors, musicians, designers and the rest – including, of course, architects. And then there are all the theatre programmes and reviews. So there is a lot on the page already.

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Blog: Art Work Reveal

Posted: July 19, 2013May 8, 2014 | by CFT | Filed under: | Tags:

Artwork, Reveal, Chichester Festival Theatre, Workshops — Pass It On Artwork Reveal celebration at Chichester Festival Theatre. Photo by Natasha Rose.

On the 12 July the first public event of the Pass It On project kicked off with a small gathering in the sunshine to celebrate the reveal of a large artwork inspired by Chichester Festival Theatre, displayed on the hoardings around the building.

A couple of blog posts ago Pass It On volunteer, Natasha Rose, wrote about her experience helping with art workshops which took place back in April with families from local charity and Pass It On partner, PACSO (Parent and Carers Support Organisation). Last Friday we were very proud to officially reveal the artwork that had been produced using prints and designs created during these workshops.

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Blog: Word for Word: Chichester Festival Youth Theatre

Posted: July 5, 2013May 8, 2014 | by CFT | Filed under: | Tags:

Word for Word, CFYT, Chichester Festival Youth Theatre, Volunteers — Youth Theatre members pose at the end of their performance of Word For Word

Between January and April of this year, 18 Year 11 Youth Theatre members and I were involved in creating a piece of Verbatim Theatre, a style of theatre where the text is taken directly from interview transcripts. As Youth Theatre intern, I was given the opportunity to run a project of my choosing. I decided to create and direct a piece of Verbatim theatre as it is a style that I had only ever written and thought about in an academic setting, never in any practical way. I asked for volunteers who would be interested in generating and performing such a piece. Continue reading “Word for Word: Chichester Festival Youth Theatre” →

Blog: Family art workshops with PACSO

Posted: July 5, 2013August 10, 2015 | by CFT | Filed under: | Tags:

Sun prints, PACSO, partnership, Heritage Lottery, Learning — Making sun prints: Items from the props store were placed on photosensitive paper before being developed in water

Heritage Lottery Funding has enabled Chichester Festival Theatre to carry out a Heritage Learning and Participation project over three years, exploring activities such as workshops, working with schools, exhibitions, archiving and volunteer training in order to increase community collaboration and engagement with the Theatre, ultimately enhancing the awareness of its exciting Heritage. As part of this project, the Theatre ran two Family art workshops, in partnership with PACSO (Parents and Carers Support Organisation), My role as a volunteer was to research, collect data and record observations, in order to evaluate how valuable the workshops were in terms of engagement and learning for its participants and the other volunteers involved. This then enabled me to create an evaluative report and blog. Continue reading “Family art workshops with PACSO” →

Blog: Architecture students tour CFT

Posted: June 25, 2013May 19, 2014 | by CFT | Filed under: | Tags:

Architecture, Students, University of Portsmouth, Chichester Festival Theatre, RENEW — Architecture tours Students in the foyer of the Festival Theatre in the middle of the ReNEW project

The Pass It On heritage lottery funded project kicked off with the first event on a surprisingly sunny day in March. On the 13 March, 40 architecture students and lecturers from the University of Portsmouth descended on the Festival Theatre to find out more about the history, architecture and current building work going on at our architecturally (almost) impossible theatre! On hand were experts involved in many different aspects of the current RENEW project to talk to the students about the building and give them an inside perspective on all the on-going construction work. Continue reading “Architecture students tour CFT” →