A blog from PhD and CHASE (Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-east England) placement student Emily Walker, Curatorial Assistant of the Television Comedy Collection 2018-2020 and Curator of The Fast Show 25th Anniversary Exhibition 2019-2020 at the BACW (British Archive for Contemporary Writing).
I first discovered the Charlie Higson collection back in 2017 in a postgraduate seminar at the British Archive for Contemporary Writing (BACW) at UEA. As a television comedy researcher I assumed there was nothing there for me, but luckily I decided to go along anyway! When I started looking through Higson’s collection I was surprised and delighted to find TV comedy materials, but as a fan of Higson’s writing I was also genuinely enthused to delve into the archive’s 32 boxes of scripts, sketches, notebooks, and ephemera. Therefore, when lead curator Justine Mann mentioned the archive was looking for a CHASE placement student to work with the archive’s burgeoning Television Comedy Writing collection, I quickly snapped up the opportunity. I only planned on working for a couple of months but have ended up staying with the archive part-time for over 2 years, which I am told is the longest-running placement in CHASE history.
My favourite aspect of my archive placement has undoubtedly been the huge variety of new tasks I have completed, ranging from cataloguing the entire Higson collection online to investigating the preservation of digital scriptwriting and presenting my findings to my peers at the CHASE Encounters July 2019 conference and the ArAcAi Born Digital Archives January 2020 conference. A particular highlight was working with Charlie Higson himself and comedy partner Paul Whitehouse when I was part of the managing team for The Fast Show 25th anniversary event in December 2019 and curated an accompanying exhibition that was attended by 300 students, staff, and members of the public (selling out in around 24 hours). This also led to a (brief) appearance on the Fast Show documentary that aired on GOLD in August 2020, and for this work I was honoured to receive a nomination for the 2020 UEA PGR Award for Public Engagement. It is easy to forget how much of an impact The Fast Show has made on the British public when working alone with the materials for 2 years, and at the anniversary celebration event it was fantastic to see such an outpouring of affection for it 25 years later.
Through the placement I have had the chance to really experience the diverse range of roles an archivist inhabits – in fact, when I recently checked the government’s new National Careers Service webpage on archivists I found I had completed every single day-to-day task it listed! This career experience will be absolutely vital whether I stay in academic research or move into archivism, both in terms of personal development (such as attention to detail, organisation, and public speaking) and new skills (including online cataloguing, archivist terminology, and archive research).
As I come to the end of my placement I am already planning my return, because I have no doubt that I will be using the archive materials I curated in my own research. I would like to thank my funding board CHASE for backing my placement and lead curator Justine Mann whose continual support has been invaluable. It has been a privilege to work with the BACW for the last two years and to anyone considering a placement or a visit to the archive, I highly recommend it!
Other blog posts
https://www.dpconline.org/blog/archiving-final-draft
A blog post on my research into the use of Final Draft as an archiving tool, which I later presented at the CHASE Encounters July 2019 conference and the ArAcAi January 2020 conference.
https://unboundueaarchives.wordpress.com/-tag/comedy/
A blog on the series of Charlie Higson careers seminars I helped to organise in October 2018.
https://www.poetrysurvival.com/programme-aracai-conference/
A blog on the conference where I co-presented with Justine Mann on Final Draft and the issues around preserving digital scripts in the archive.
https://www.chortle.co.uk/features/2019/12/06/44957/the_fast_show_is_a_terrible_title
Articles on The Fast Show 25th anniversary event which I helped to organise.
https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2020-08-18/paul-whitehouse-fast-show-characters-return/
An article on The Fast Show documentaries in which I appeared.
