Work can begin on a major new project to catalogue and preserve archives held at Lighthouse Poole in the run-up to its 50th anniversary after Dorset History Centre was awarded a £600,000 grant by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
The funding is to help promote access to archives as part of Dorset History Centre’s Past Lives, Future Proofed project that will see it working in with arts organisations, including Lighthouse, to improve engagement with artistic archives.
Volunteers are now being invited to undertake the necessary training to make the archives ready to transfer to Dorset History Centre for permanent preservation, cataloguing and future engagement work. This will involve working with the Project Archivist to prepare the archive by helping to re-box and box-list the collection, and sort individual series as required.
“We are so excited to be working with Dorset History to catalogue our archive,” says Martha Earley, Creative Engagement Manger at Lighthouse. “As we approach our 50th anniversary in 2028 we are even more eager to see what stories this project uncovers.”
This work will lay the foundation for further cataloguing of the Lighthouse collection by the Project Archivist, with additional digitisation which may result in further volunteer cataloguing.
Lighthouse opened as Poole Arts Centre in 1978 and is one of the UK’s largest regional arts centres. This archive project will underpin its 50th anniversary celebrations in 2028.
Dorset History Centre is home to several internationally important collections of artists’ archives, such as Elisabeth Frink and Poole Pottery, and authors such as Thomas Hardy and Sylvia Townsend-Warner. Using Lighthouse as a pilot, it aims to build on a strong record in archiving the arts in Dorset by collecting archives from arts venues where archives could be at-risk if left in situ.
These collections will help to widen the representation of arts activities, venues, organisations and individual artists seen in the county since the 1980s and explore the benefits of the arts for wellbeing, using archives to inspire both older and younger people with health and wellbeing challenges.
To find out more about volunteering for the Lighthouse Poole Archive Project, please visit
Past Lives – Future Proofed – Lighthouse Archive Project | Open Call – Lighthouse.
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photo – Jayne Jackson Photography