Remembering 1960s British Cinema-going

'Remembering 1960s British Cinema-going' follows on from the earlier AHRC-funded project 'Cultural Memory and British Cinema-going of the 1960s,' which was designed to collect - by means of questionnaires and interviews - memories of those who went to British cinemas half a century ago. The earlier project (2013-15) stimulated much public interest. 11 screenings were originally proposed as a means of involving people in the project. These were so enthusiastically received that ultimately we organised 30 screenings across the UK and gave 14 talks about the project's work. Many more people than we originally anticipated returned questionnaires, either online or in paper form, and we were frequently told that completing the questionnaire, being interviewed by the project team or participating in one of our events had been an enjoyable experience, prompting more memories for those who remember the 1960s. Younger people found that our events offered insight into the different world of cinema-going of their parents' or grandparents' generation.

The principal aim of the 'Remembering 1960s British Cinema-going' project is to bring the wealth of research produced by the earlier project to the attention of a much greater variety of audiences and publics. It will also encourage the use of the Digital Collection of anonymised project questionnaires and interviews on the UCL Library website, an output of the original project, by members of the wider community as well as scholars. To achieve these aims, we will organise - with diverse partners - a series of well-publicised events appealing to different sections of the UK community. 3 large 'immersive 60s cinema' events will imaginatively recreate the experience of 60s cinema-going. These will bring together those who have personal memories of the 60s with younger people interested in aspects of the culture of the time. From our earlier research, we have discovered that many people have very specific memories of going to the cinema in particular localities. We will join with local civic, history societies, film clubs and University of the Third Age (U3A) branches to present and discuss these local findings in 23 further events across the UK. Our research has also identified a different culture of cinema-going amongst some groups, including members of the BAME and LGBT communities, and we will outline these findings with members of the groups concerned at 9 further events. Because cinema-going memories throw a special light on British history of the 1960s, with many films addressing social, cultural and political issues of the day, we will demonstrate the relevance of our work to teachers and students of AS/A-level courses on modern British history through 9 school events, 2 of them 'Study Days' organised in association with the British Film Institute. Our digital collection of 60s cinema-going materials will be of particular interest to such teachers and students, since it will encourage and support individual or collective research and project work. It will also be relevant to members of the U3A who are studying particular films or genres.

The presentation of our findings and the existence of the Digital Collection will make, we believe, an important contribution to the identification and preservation of our cultural heritage, offering in particular a further stimulus to local history projects dealing with cinemas and cinema-going among the communities and organisations with whom we collaborate, in particular among BAME and LGBT groups, as well as local civic societies, history associations and film clubs. We also trust that our 'immersive 60s cinema' events will have a broad impact, proving successful enough to be adopted by the cinema industry itself.

'Remembering 1960s British Cinema-going' will have impact by disseminating the research findings of the project 'Cultural Memory and British Cinema-going of the 1960s' through 44 events across the UK involving up to 4400 people. The events concerned will be divided into four types, each addressed to particular audiences.

The 3 large 'immersive 60s cinema' events will promote inter-generational understanding by bringing together older people who remember 1960s cinema-going with younger people who cannot. The background to these events is discussed in the 'Case for Support,' but they are also inspired by the realisation during the earlier data-gathering stage of the project that certain films - e.g. early James Bonds and American films such as The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde (both half a century old in 2017) - attracted cross-generational audiences. The imaginative events here proposed will appeal to older spectators, confirming and validating (or perhaps challenging) their memories while demonstrating to younger spectators that 60s cinema-going was a very different experience. We will publicise these events in social, local and - if possible - national media in order to extend their impact beyond the large audiences proposed. The events themselves can be perceived as a proof of concept test phase and their success may persuade other cinemas to hold similar events, benefitting their communities and offering financial gains for the cinema industry.

In our 9 educational events, 2 of them 'Study Days' organised in collaboration with the British Film Institute, we will demonstrate the impact our research can have for teachers and students in AS/A-level modern British history courses. There is much interest on the part of teachers, expressed in online discussion threads, in finding new ways to interest students taking such courses. The personal memories we have collected in our digital resource, we will demonstrate, can provide an innovative way of bringing 60s social and cultural history alive in the classroom and offer opportunities for deeper analysis in project work. In consultation with the teachers we have worked with, we will subsequently submit an article to the Times Educational Supplement or Guardian Education on using our digital collection in AS/A level studies and coursework.

In 9 further events, working in collaboration with Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) groups across the UK, we will share the rich material we have uncovered on the 60s cinema-going history of minorities. These events will be capacity building for the groups concerned, providing them with cultural benefit through a greater understanding of the world in which their predecessors lived and the manner in which they often created, in part at least, a new sense of identity out of their cinema-going experiences. Since some of our events will be organised to coincide with events in the life of the community concerned (for example, Black History month), we aim to encourage further work on the history of the minority concerned.

In 23 other events, we will discuss our findings with local civic, history and film societies, and branches of the University of the Third Age (U3A). The principal motivation here is that fact that many people - at events organised by the original project - were eager to share their memories of local cinema-going. Yet our data-gathering project has now ended, and - unless they participated in the project itself - it is likely that such memories will be permanently lost. By sharing the memories we have collected with local organisations, we hope to encourage others to harvest memories of this kind to create local resources that will confer cultural benefit by shedding light on the social and cultural history of the community concerned. These local events will also inform thinking and contribute to debate, encouraging future collaborations between the groups concerned.