Archives
This collection was initiated to mark the 50th anniversary of the Arts Council of Great Britain’s first funding of community arts in the UK in 1975. Unsurprisingly, many of the archives we uncovered during our research are UK-based. However, we are keen to expand the collection to more fully represent community art practices internationally.
Inevitably, the archives present a fragmented and partial view of the field, as many organisations that played a significant role have left little or no record of their activities.
Please contact us if you know of an archive that you think should be added to this collection
See also Collection 1: Activist Archives
Art in the public interest
Art in the Public Interest (API), founded in 1995 in North Carolina, is a nonprofit organization supporting artists and groups integrating the arts with social and community concerns. Led by co-directors Linda Frye Burnham and Steven Durland, API promotes progressive, socially engaged art. Through publications, workshops, archives, and collaborations, API provides resources for artists and educates the public, advocating for art that enriches both culture and society. API is no longer engaged in any active projects or programming other than our efforts to make the High Performance and the Community Arts Network archives of stories, essays, interviews and more available on the Internet.
Blackfriars Community Photography Project Archive
The Blackfriars Photography Project, initiated by Blackfriars Settlement—originally the Women’s University Settlement founded in 1887—documented political events and community life in Southwark and North Lambeth. Based in Southwark, the project operated until July 1994, when it closed due to a loss of funding. Its photographic archives were subsequently split between Southwark Local Studies Library and Lambeth Archives, depending on the geographical relevance of the material.
Canal Projects Archive
Canal Projects Library is a contemporary visual arts space in Lower Manhattan, in which has hosted a series of community based artists’ residencies. The archive documents these projects dating from 2022 to today.
Chats Palace Archive
Chats Palace, based in Homerton, Hackney, has supported diverse artistic and social initiatives for over 35 years. Originally a Carnegie library opened in 1913, the building was reclaimed by the community after its closure in 1974. In the 1980s, it served up to 50,000 visitors annually. This project explores its legacy and influence on East London’s arts scene through exhibitions, photography, oral history and film, led by photographer Asya Gefter and PhotoChats founder Peter Young.
CSpace
For 20 years, cSPACE utilised visual arts and digital media to help communities express their visions and aspirations, promoting social change through cultural activism. Collaborative and participatory projects drew on local and international networks, combining community-based first-hand knowledge with broad reach, supported by transdisciplinary expertise from professional and academic partners. In this way cSPACE was able to create impactful artistic initiatives that brought community experience into the public sphere to enter wider discourse and contribute to meaningful change.
Community Arts Project Poster Collection, South Africa
The Community Arts Project (CAP) Collection, housed at the Centre for Humanities Research (CHR) at UWC since 2009, features visual works such as paintings, posters, and sculptures. It is especially known for resistance posters from the 1980s–90s, created largely by anti-apartheid activists, often using screenprinting. These posters, now merged with UWC-RIM’s Mayibuye Archives, reflect a grassroots, DIY artistic movement shaped by the struggle and collective action under apartheid.
Four Corners Photography Archive
The Four Corners Archive documents the film and photographic legacy of Four Corners, Half Moon Photography Workshop, and Camerawork magazine from 1972–1987. These East London organisations were central to the rise of radical visual practices in the 1970s and early ’80s. The project makes these significant cultural archives publicly accessible for the first time. Users can search the archive online and save items for later viewing via a digital lightbox feature.
Fragile Archivists
In 2011, Asya Gefter and Peter Young created a multimedia project for the V&A Museum of Childhood exploring intergenerational play in East London. Their shared interest in overlooked histories led them to the Chats Palace visual archive, documenting grassroots arts and political activism, including events like Rock Against Racism. In 2016, their project Fragile Archivists featured in Hackney Museum’s ‘People Power’ exhibition, reconnecting past activists and inspiring younger generations.
It’s Not Common / C’est Pas Commun
It’s Not Common archive makes available past broadcasts of the EuRadio program It’s Not Common dedicated to Community Art presented in French by Alexia Jacques Casanova.
John Hoppy Hopkins
John “Hoppy” Hopkins (1937–2015) was a British photographer, journalist, researcher, and activist at the heart of London’s 1960s counterculture. A Cambridge physics graduate, he gained fame photographing musicians and underground life. He co-founded International Times, the UFO Club, and helped launch the Notting Hill Carnival. Jailed in 1967 for cannabis possession, he inspired drug law reform campaigns. Later, he co-founded the community arts video organisation Fantasy Factory with Sue Hall, and worked in video research,and journalism.
Jubilee Arts Archive
The Jubilee Arts Archive (1974–94), held at Sandwell Archives, includes over 20,000 negatives and slides, as well as prints, Super 8mm film, VHS tapes and printed materials. It offers a rich visual record of British society and local life from the 1970s onwards, documenting community-based art and social movements. These images now serve as a vital historical record of political, cultural, and social change across the UK.
London Community Video Archive
The London Community Video Archive (LCVA), based at Goldsmiths, University of London and the BFI, is dedicated to preserving, archiving, and sharing community videos from the 1970s/80s in London and the South East. As portable video recording emerged in the early 1970s, marginalized groups seized the opportunity to create their own television content. LCVA safeguards around 60 archived videos, 25 oral history interviews, scanned documents, and screening reports. Founded by video activists Tony Dowmunt and Andy Porter, the project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, revives this historical community-driven media, providing a resource for contemporary activism and debates.
MIAAW.Net
The website contains over 200 podcasts that vary in length from 20 to 70 minutes. They cover community, creativity, cultural democracy and the commons and come in three sorts: interviews, conversations, and audio-essays. Each has a show page with notes and links. They are sorted by series and tags.
Mid Pennine Arts
The Mid Pennine Arts Archive MPA50 documents over fifty years of MPA’s arts programme. The archive began in 2016, when volunteer archivists started sorting and cataloguing thousands of items of cultural history. Though the pilot project only scratched the surface, it marked the first step in the challenging process of digitising and sharing the archive’s rich collection of artefacts.
Paddington Printshop
Paddington Printshop, active in west London from 1975 to 1989, was a vibrant printmaking centre producing posters and leaflets in collaboration with local groups. Its DIY, proto-Punk ethos linked it to the early Punk scene, printing posters for the Sex Pistols and The 101’ers. Influential in political poster art post-1968, it inspired similar initiatives nationwide. It later evolved into londonprintstudio, continuing its support for artists and community engagement.
Philip Wolmuth Archive
This archive showcases the UK-based photographic work of Philip Wolmuth, focusing on the impact of social, economic and political forces on individuals and communities. Active in west London during the 1970s and ’80s, Wolmuth founded the North Paddington Community Darkroom, documenting many of the same communities and campaigns associated with Paddington Printshop. The archive also includes a small selection of images from the Caribbean and Europe, and can be browsed by subject, gallery or search.
Radical and Community Printshops
This site documents the history of radical and community printing collectives in the UK during the late 20th century, including poster collectives, service printers, typesetters and print resource centres. These presses formed part of a wider activist network, producing and distributing printed materials to support political causes. Rooted in a long tradition of radical printing, the movement continues today in various forms, though much of its communication now happens online. The site categorises printshops and offers links to digital archives.
Rebel Video
This archive is linked to the book Rebel Video: The Video Movement of the 1970s and 1980s , which is featured in the Community Arts Bibliography: Photography and Video listing on this site.
The archive contains extracts from a number of socially and politically focused videos, as well as interviews with radical video makers from the 1970s and 1980s.
Rio Tape-Slide Archive
The Rio Tape Slide Newsreel Group (RTSNG) archive offers a vivid record of life in 1980s Hackney, London, UK. Its photographs capture local people at work, at home, in pubs, schools, allotments, and on the High Street, as well as documenting major social and political issues of the time – from AIDS and unemployment to the miners’ strike, Greenham Common protests, and the death of Colin Roach. Together, these images present an unfiltered portrait of community life, activism, and resilience in East London during a decade of upheaval.
SE1 Stories
SE1 Community Newspaper was a grassroots publication produced by local residents of North Southwark and Waterloo from 1975 to 1991. It provided a platform for community perspectives often absent from mainstream media, particularly focusing on critical issues around development and regeneration. Published in two phases, the newspaper ran for a total of 147 issues. A near-complete digitised archive is now available online through Southwark Archives, with a few missing issues hosted on Archive.org.
See Red
See Red Women’s Workshop, founded in 1974 by three ex-art students, was a feminist screen-printing collective producing posters, postcards and illustrations for the women’s liberation movement and community groups. Working collectively and sharing skills were core values, with content often reflecting women’s lived experiences. Despite harassment from the National Front and funding challenges, See Red thrived with council support until its closure in 1990. Its legacy remains in its high-quality, radical visual output and DIY ethos.
Skinningrove Bonfire
For over 30 years, Skinningrove, a tiny village in a remote corner of East Cleveland UK created a truly spectacular annual event. A small band of willing volunteers dedicated much of their time and energy into making this wonderful event possible. Their efforts have been rewarded by the many thousands who have visited Skinningrove to participate between 1982 to 2018. The archive documents the Skinningrove Bonfire project.
Telford Community Arts Archive
Made by local residents with community arts practitioners. The full archive, now held at Shropshire Archives, documents collective art-making in Telford from 1974 to 1989. It includes workshop materials, reports, photographs, audio and more. The archive is searchable online, with items available to view in person or request digitally for a fee.
Unfinished Histories: Community and Street Theatre
Unfinished Histories documents the rich legacy of alternative theatre in Britain during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, focusing on pioneering community, street, political and identity-based groups. These included some of the UK’s first Black, Asian, LGBTQ+, women’s, disabled, and TIE companies. Founded in 2006, the project collected oral histories and archival materials—now housed in institutions like the Bishopsgate Institute and the British Library. Though limited in new activity, the archive remains a vital resource and continues to support activist causes today.
Walls with Tongues
For Walls With Tongues is an oral history project documenting the UK mural movement from 1966 to 1985, based on interviews with 30 muralists and studies of five more. Murals during this period flourished as tools for local pride, cultural expression, and social change, often linked to the wider Community Arts movement. The project, also a book and website, highlights the muralists’ contributions, their international connections, and the vital support they received from arts councils, trusts and communities.
Welfare State Archive
Welfare State International (WSI), founded in 1968 by John Fox, Sue Gill, Roger Coleman and others, was a pioneering collective of artists dedicated to taking art out of theatres and into public spaces. Known for large-scale outdoor events, WSI fused performance, sculpture, music and pyrotechnics to create community carnivals and site-specific spectacles. From 1999–2006, WSI was based at Lanternhouse in Ulverston, a purpose-built arts centre. Its final project was Longline, a Carnival Opera performed in 2006.