The National Review of Live Art is the United Kingdom's major festival of live and performance art. For over twenty years, it has been extensively documented on video, creating a valuable record of performances, installations and talks. With funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the collection is now being conserved by a team based in the Department of Drama for access in the Theatre Collection.

• The archive
• Aims of the project
• Preserving the carriers
• Digitising for preservation
• Digitising for access
• Intellectual property rights
• Staff
• Contact us

News and events

Past events

National Review of Live Art 2008: screening programme
Thursday 9 February 2008, 19.00–20.00
Tramway, Glasgow

The project presented a screening of documentation from over twenty years of the archive, featuring performers appearing in the 2008 festival, as well as an interactive viewing station with uncut archival footage.

Archival encounters
Tuesday 26 June 2007, 15.00–17.00
Department of Drama, University of Bristol

Presenters:

• Richard Layzell
• Paul Hurley (University of Bristol)
• Ruth Holdsworth (University of Bristol)

The digitisation project has now begun to make significant parts of the archive, which were formerly too fragile to view, accessible. This event asked how researchers, artists and students might begin to engage with the archive's holdings. What challenges and opportunities does audio-visual documentation present to its users? What sorts of responses are available to users of the archive: written and performative, scholarly and artistic?

National Review of Live Art 2007: artists' breakfast
Friday 9 February 2007, 11.00–13.00
Tramway, Glasgow

Presenters:

• Deirdre Heddon (University of Glasgow)
• Michael Mayhew
• Barry Parsons (University of Bristol)

The project team presented recently digitised archival footage and hosted an event to discuss issues of documentation and archiving for practitioners and researchers in live art.