Members

The Box

The Box opened in September 2020, the result of an ambitious £47m regeneration project which transformed Plymouth’s former City Museum and Art Gallery, Central Library and St Luke’s church. It’s already welcomed over 750,000 visitors. With a vision focused on ‘reimagining the future through the past’, a programme that combines the best of contemporary art with significant art, natural history, human history, film, photographic and archive collections, plus social, retail, education and research spaces, The Box is a fantastic resource for the city and the South West.

Working with artists and audiences, it is committed to shaping civic pride, finding creative ways to engage with those who are least able to access culture, and using its distinctive blend of museum, gallery and archive to ask questions about and explore the issues relating to the world we live in.

The Box has more than 250,000 items maintained in their original analogue and born digital formats in its archive film collection. In addition to 2,000 amateur collections deposited for safekeeping by members of the public and local businesses, it also holds the Westward and Television South West collection.

The moving image collection is one of the largest regional film archive collections in the UK and is recognised nationally as being a significant screen heritage resource, depicting the many changes that have taken place in the city and a region from the late 1890s to the present day. Over 800 clips from it are available to view on BFIPlayer here and here.

Visitors to The Box can also explore its Media Lab gallery which celebrates the technologies, processes and people that have shaped the South West’s film and photographic heritage.

You can find out more at Welcome to The Box | The Box Plymouth.

For requests about The Box’s film licensing service please visit Image & Film Service | The Box Plymouth.