Moving and Projected Image Entertainment in the South-West 1820-1914

Moving and projected images were ubiquitous forms of public recreation from the early years of the nineteenth century. Whether it was a Sunday School gathered together for a magic lantern performance, children enjoying a peepshow at a fair, a touring panorama at the local town hall, or the fascination exerted by the cinematograph at the music hall, there was a rich tradition of popular entertainment that stretched forward to the twentieth century.
Our understanding of the national distribution of these entertainments, however, is limited by a lack of systematic knowledge concerning their national distribution. This project explores the exhibition of moving and projected images in the South-West between 1820 and 1914. Through a regional case study, it seeks to fill a significant gap in the national picture by mapping the wealth of provincial entertainments. The project will also contribute to a broader reassessment of the long history of moving and projected images by demonstrating the important continuities between nineteenth-century screen entertainments and the cinema, and the way that the advent of cinema did not immediately lead to the disappearance of pre-existing screen media.
Moving and projected images were exhibited in a large range of fixed-venue and touring shows across the South-West. The research team working on the project will undertake a comparative investigation, which uses different locations as case studies to explore the factors affecting the distribution of individual entertainment types. The South-West is an ideal region for a case study of this type because it encompasses prominent cities like Bristol, which regularly received the latest London entertainments, as well as rural areas like North Devon. The South-West also presents an important contrast with the new industrial areas of the Midlands and North of England. Exeter, Bristol, and Plymouth, as urban centres, are the principal locations to be examined, but the project team will also research the sea-side resorts of North and South Devon, particularly Torquay, Exmouth, Teignmouth, and Ilfracombe.
Through tracing the exhibition of screen media in venues ranging from bazaars and fairs to music halls, the project will demonstrate their incorporation into and competition with other entertainment forms. The number of venues exhibiting moving and projecting images corresponds with their use for a variety of educational, reportage, and amusement purposes. The research team will analyse this range of subject matter and performance practices as part of its larger concern with the relationship between metropolitan and provincial entertainment. The subject matter, for example, reveals the balance between exhibitions that dealt with national and international themes and those that directly appealed to local sensibilities.