This week marks a very exciting and important step in the Pass It On project and for Chichester Festival Theatre. Our new online digital archive is now live – meaning you can browse through heritage material and content from the Theatre’s past. This is a huge achievement as for two years now, volunteers have been scanning and editing items from our paper archive and memorabilia collection. This has allowed for greater public access to the Chichester Festival Theatre archive as we can share digital content in a manner of ways, including our website and Twitter and Pinterest accounts. The idea is that the digital version of the item looks as accurate and realistic as its physical counter-part, so you don’t necessarily need to visit the Record Office for research.
We’ve been working really hard to update the online archive which now allows for a much better experience when browsing through our heritage content.
The digital archive can be searched using a variety of filters. Changing the file type allows you to browse through different types of items: Print, Photographs, Document, Oral History and Video.
- A production photo from Cyrano de Bergerac (1975) featuring Kieth Michell, Christipher Cazenove and Barbara Jefford. There are many interesting production photos and pieces of backstage footage in the new digital archive.
You can also search by how an item has been tagged: Festival Theatre, Buildings and site, Founding of CFT, Productions, Box Office, CFT Tent, Plays, Theatre in the Park and Theatre Society.
More file types and tags will be added over the coming months as the online collection grows.
If there is something specific you are looking for, then you can use the keywords box to narrow your findings, as well as adjusting which time period you are interested in using the green scroll bar.
We are uploading new content as fast as we can and are really excited to share this new, big step in the Pass It On project with you all. We’d like to thank all of our scanning and Photoshop volunteers; without all their hard work and commitment, there wouldn’t be much to share with you!
As always, we’d love to know what you think. Email us at [email protected] with your feedback.