As the smoke billowed across the room it was difficult to pick out my colleagues. There was a general haziness in the air throwing everything into soft relief. The opulent drapes and covers offered an air of sumptuousness whilst the sound of Bert Ambrose and his orchestra (or perhaps Jack Hylton?) blasted earnestly from the horn of the wind-up gramophone. The décor, the furniture and the ambience were all very much 1930s – and that is exactly where we were.
No, this was not another one of my accidental time-travel journeys. We were firmly and squarely in 2017, and more precisely in the Freud Bar, 196 Shaftesbury Avenue on a rather damp late February evening. The Freud Bar had morphed into a recreation of the Caravan Club due to the splendid collaborative research and work between The National Archives and the National Trust as part of the Queer City project. We were at the launch party for the project that celebrates LGBT heritage during March.
I vividly recall my first visit to the then Public Record Office on 13 January 2000. Yes, I am a relative ‘newbie’ still finding my way. That first visit was daunting, the building just breathed ‘archives’ – sombre, serious and static, reinforced by the oak panelling on the first floor and the almost endless shelves of files – the catalogue. The ambience was heavy and seemingly frozen in time: history etched, enduring and very much in the past. A lot has changed between my first tentative incursion at Kew and finding myself in a smoke-filled room seventeen years later, and some twenty years before I was born.
Recreating history in a more academic sense, rather than a commercial venture, has always been with us – the re-enactment societies bear witness to that. However, the more dynamic use of archive material itself is a relatively new concept and the Caravan Club offers a prime example. Using police photographs from the time, the space that was the club has been recreated, and done in a very effective manner. Once static displays of documents and artefacts was the order of the day, but now we can bring them to life in new, interesting and diverse ways.
That has got me thinking about the almost endless possibilities there are for deploying archive materials and artefacts in ways that not only make history more accessible but also make the archives more accessible too. I survived my first visit to Kew and now The National Archives feels like home, but I appreciate that it may not be so for everyone. This is something that The National Archives has recognised in their Archives Inspire plans. As The National Archives repositions itself to become a more cultural and research focused venue so to do the Friends follow, as the support charity doing our bit to offer assistance and resources whenever we can.
A lot has already happened in such a short space of time. The Friends have funded and supported numerous events and projects that are helping to reinterpret and unlock the past and make the collections at Kew ‘work’. New and innovative approaches such as the use of film and themed family events have helped to introduce new audiences and help peel away the layers of the ‘sombre, serious and static’.
Some recent examples that we have supported include the Somme Tales film project and In Our Minds. We are currently supporting the allotment project, based on documents from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF), and there are upcoming projects interpreting the records through film (the Suffragettes) and art (the Reformation). Our collaboration with The National Archives’ Outreach Team has helped introduce aspects of World War I history through drama.
It will probably be a little while before I am back in a smoke-filled room listening to Ambrose on a wind-up gramophone. However, I have no idea where, and in what era, I may end up next on behalf of the Friends. Time-travel seems to be the order of the day so I shall just keep calm and – carry on.