INTER-ACTION TO LONDON ARCHIVES (via Unfinished Histories)
Bulletin One 9 March 2025
The archive on its arrival at ACAVA
Welcome! I am Tony Coult, tasked with the exciting project of preparing a safeguarded home for the Inter-Action archive at the London (Metropolitan) Archives. As most of you will know, David Powell has been working on a crowd-fundraising exercise to enable this work to be done, and the response has been both generous and indicative of the very special role that Inter-Action has played over many years of artistic, creative and social enterprise achievement. The funding has been donated to Unfinished Histories, whose expertise under the leadership of Dr. Susan Croft has been crucial both in securing the physical safety and preservation of the material. We now look forward to making it, at last, available for arts activists, scholars, teachers and learners here in London and across the world. Inter-Action, and its founder Prof. ED Berman already has a major foot in the door of arts history at Unfinished Histories, especially with the major, 5-hour long interview with ED Berman, and a substantial set of pages on the companies individual projects over the years. (refs)
I would like to outline briefly my role and my reason for taking on this welcome challenge. In 1969-70, fellow Birmingham University Drama students, Pat Barlow, Jim Hiley and Geoff Hoyle joined up with ED Berman to pioneer a whole new approach to drama and community, rooted in the Inter-Action Game method, developed from the artistic practice of ED Berman and led by him. I found myself in Leeds after graduation, volunteering with Interplay, a company rooted in the same Game Method practice and work for and with children and young people. Carry Gorney, co-founder of Interplay and carrying the Game Method torch from London to Leeds, was my mentor in street theatre, children’s work, and drama games. I joined Interplay as a volunteer and after, a company member, and also later worked on Inter-Action projects in Camden and in Milton Keynes.
In the early years of the new millennium, I was a volunteer worker with Susan Croft and Jess Higgs’ project, Unfinished Histories. Word came through that there was a hoard of Inter-Action material in damp garages on an estate in Crystal Palace, south London. Susan Croft and I organised the transfer of the archive to its current home at the ACAVA studio in Sudbury, north-west London. This space, facilitated by David Powell working from ACAVA, has since 2017 been paid for by ED Berman, and has been curated when possible by Unfinished Histories. However, it has never been an ideal site for researchers, scholars and students. It has very minimal resources such as poor table space, no media provision and inadequate access. It is expected that the move to London Archives, executed by Unfinished Histories will make the Inter-Action archive properly accessible and its great breadth of activity over several decades finally demonstrated.
The state of the current archive
Over the years since it has arrived at the ACAVA space in Sudbury, Susan and Tony began a rough organisational sorting based on Inter-Action’s individual (if connected) projects. This work had to give way to other, more pressing Unfinished Histories projects.
This is the model we are proposing to continue, with London Archives’ agreement and enthusiastic support. One very important task that will make the transfer both more effective, and the prospect of future research valuable, has been the work done by David Powell and Peter Mount in imposing some order and classification of the audio-visual material, which is extensive and unique. Consisting mainly of 35mm negative and positive film and audio and video tape, our estimation is that the narratives behind this extensive visual collection will be the most exciting research sources in cultural and artistic fields, as well as London “local” history.
We will be liaising with institutions who have expressed an interest in their archiving course students assisting on the Inter-Action archive move. To begin with, there will be a relatively simple task – separating out duplicates. The London Archives only require one example of an item – e.g. Liz Leyh’s Concrete Sculpture book, or flyers for a particular Summer playscheme. The question that arises will be what to do with the duplicated items. Can they be sold/donated? Can we avoid their disposal?
As the students become more familiar with the experience and history of Inter-Action, it is to be hoped that the core archiving project of creating c 50 more bankers’ boxes project-by-project can be shared with them, and their learning enriched.
A final set of questions to be answered especially as the project comes to a conclusion with the main archive on its way to London Archives is what to do with the remaining objects and equipment. For example, something like 25 Kodak Carousel slide trays, books and posters and other artefacts. ED paid for the industrial shelving that has supported the boxes over the years and clearly he will need to receive any payment for its possible sale.
A TENTATIVE TIMELINE:
March 15 to 30 – preparing the studio at Barham Park as a usable space; acquiring simple desk and chair provision,
April – May – main work to be done
June-July – contingency months
August-September – liaising with London Archives for the transport to them
October – clearing all remaining materials from Barham Park and cessation of ED’s costs for storage.
IMPORTANT NOTE – this timetable is mainly guesswork. The core work of methodically going through document boxes and getting their contents into appropriate order may take longer. The timetable may be optimistic.
One more consideration is that it might be possible to complete the task inside the budget that Unfinished Histories has to fund the work. Our hope is that there might be a surplus at the end of the exercise, thanks to the generosity of the donors. This could be then used to fund further work, perhaps in the expensive area of reviving and digitising old video-tape formats.
Both Susan Croft and Tony Coult have a digital archive of Inter-Action accumulated over Unfinished Histories’ time. This will need some work to clear duplication and then transfer to hard disk. (Clearly the original digital resource can always stay with us).
This initial Bulletin has been long in order to lay out the groundwork. We will be keeping up a series of these bulletins so that donors, archivists, students and arts activists will know what is going on. It is quite possible that we may have to contact you as questions arise from our side.
Thank-you to everyone who has worked on this very important project to date. We have a lot to live up to.
Tony Coult
with Susan Croft
Unfinished Histories, 9 March 2025