The media archive at The Box – Plymouth’s award-winning museum, art gallery and archive – is a National Lottery and British Film Institute (BFI) Screen Resilience awardee 2023-2026.

As the custodian of the South West Film and Television Archive, it’s also home to the largest public regional film archive of its kind in the UK. Thanks to finding support from the BFI, The Box has initiated a new three-year project called ‘Reimagining the Film Archive’ (RtFA).

RtFA aims to embed greater equity in the sector and adopt new approaches to representation from unheard voices in our communities. RtFA is also helping to fund climate adaptation in the film archive through training and improving on ‘Net Zero by 2030’ targets. These include streamlining storage to reduce energy consumption, climate action programming and staff training. The Box is also participating in a knowledge-sharing network led by BFI Sustainable Screen programme in association with Julie’s Bicycle.

Equity in storytelling

As part of the RtFA funding, new film archive stories are coming to the fore through commissioned research. Matt Tiller is investigating the legacy of Black Plymouth Argyle football players building on a successful public campaign to celebrate the contributions of footballer Jack Leslie to the club. Tania Nana is a campaigner for diversity and inclusion through her work with the Diversity Business Incubator CiC Plymouth and is looking into stories of women from the global majority. Priscilla Igwe is researching stories of Black creatives as part of the New Black Film Collective. A short film will showcase their research journey.

The Box has commissioned local filmmakers Imperfect Cinema to co-produce a short film with global majority community members to ‘re-imagine and connect the film archive through innovative community engagement and experimental filmmaking’. By transforming the archive into a space for experimentation and exploration, the group will create a film centred around an archival site, exploring old and new technologies. The film intends to bridge the past and present, blending sounds, conversations and memories; collecting new voices and perspectives and inviting audiences to reflect on the relevance and representation of histories and film archives today. Workshops are underway and the film is set to be screened in The Box’s Media Lab gallery later this year.

Greening the screen

The Box’s RtFA group is part of the BFI’s Sustainable Screen ‘Beyond Production’ programme and has attended webinars hosted by Julie’s Bicycle about climate literacy, environmental policies and plans, environmental performance and progress and creative climate tools and reporting. This complements ongoing work since Plymouth City Council became one of the first of 160 local authorities to declare a climate emergency in March 2019. The Box is also working with Arts Council England and on specialist care advice provided by the Archives and Records Association (ARA) to archivists and the Museums Association to the cultural and archives’ sector with an aim of lowering our carbon footprint by 10% by 2026.

Archives for all

In December 2023, The Box welcomed Film Hub South West members for their meetup followed by a joint event which included an introduction to the film archive, a behind the scenes tour of film and tape holdings, the Cottonian Research Room, freezer and media stores, media workroom and a screen heritage exhibition in the Media Lab gallery. The meetup also included a special screening and curator’s talk about John Akomfrah’s major new film commission for The Box Arcadia (2023).

We look forward to welcoming you to The Box in Plymouth. You can find out more about us at Welcome to The Box | The Box Plymouth

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

Words by Chloe Hughes, Engagement Programmes Manager at The Box