Hudd Music Hall Archive

The glory days of the Music Hall was brought to life on Monday 23 January 2012 with the launch of the Hudd Music Hall Archive Project at Suffolk New College.

This exciting new project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) will catalogue and organise the unique collection of over 20,000 items of Music Hall and Variety song sheets, acts, programmes, posters and associated audio and video materials owned by theSuffolkbased actor, performer and historian Roy Hudd. The project will use the archive to create an initial programme of community, educational and performance activities and exhibition alongside an effective curation plan and options for its future sustainability.

Roy Hudd said: “I have been collecting the archive for over 50 years. Each item, each song sheet or poster tells a unique story which is as relevant today as when it was performed. I want the archive to live and to be enjoyed; this project will make that happen.”

Oakmere Solutions Ltd is leading the project, which is directed bySuffolkNewCollegeand supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). Project Leader Dr Peter Funnell, Director at Oakmere Solutions Ltd said: “The Hudd archive has enormous potential to help people understand the importance of the Music Hall in current popular culture and its key role in the everyday lives of people during its heyday between 1830-1930. We will do this by drawing onRoy’s encyclopaedic knowledge of the Music Hall and his passion to make the magic and excitement of the Music Hall available to a new generation.”

The project runs until 31 August 2013 and is based atSuffolkNewCollege,Ipswich.

Project background and context:

Music Hall, and its successor, Variety, are significant and enduring elements of UK Heritage and popular culture. As artistic forms, the Music Hall and Variety continue to inform and inspire contemporary entertainment and social commentary by offering rich insights into the lives and cultural practices of previous generations. The Music Hall in particular, with its origins in the new style pub entertainment of the1830’s, and popularity peak in the period 1850 to 1930, offers through the words and music of the time a singular insight into the past particularly of the urban working class in an area that may be otherwise “hidden by history”.

Through its portrayal of both the everyday and historically dramatic the history and artefacts of the Music Hall paints a vivid and resonant picture of how people found comfort and solidarity in laughter, story and music. Indeed the Music Hall and Variety were the life-blood of popular entertainment from the mid nineteenth century until television established itself in the fifties and sixties.

In 1957 John Osborne, in The Entertainer wrote: “The music hall is dying, and with it, a significant part ofEngland. Some of the heart ofEnglandhas gone; something that once belonged to everyone, for this was truly a folk art.”

Today the legacy of Music Hall and Variety can be found in buildings, texts, photographs, music scores, and memorabilia. However much of the history of the Music Hall and Variety is unrecorded and where it does exist is insufficiently curated, interpreted or accessible. This project will address this by creating a living and accessible archive with both national and local elements which has public value whilst making available rich material for contemporary users.

The project will catalogue the archive and produce a plan for its sustainable conservation, access and use. This work will be completed by early summer 2012. Once catalogued, selected items will support community engagement through a number of approaches including performance, digitisation and exhibition, focusing on the following specific audiences:

• Students ofSuffolkNewCollegeand their tutors. The project will introduce a new generation to the magic, excitement and cultural heritage value of Music Hall and Variety through access to the archive and the opportunity to perform material from the canon;

• Adult learners with a particular interest in local cultural history. The archive will be used to explore links with Music Hall and Variety activities and venues in Norfolk and Suffolk through engagement with local history groups supported by the Norfolk and Suffolk Record Offices, the Centre for East Anglian Studies and the East Anglian Film Archive;

• Elderly local residents. Items from the collections will be selected and used as stimulus for reminiscence work with elderly residents of sheltered housing supported by volunteers;

• Volunteers. A range of volunteering opportunities will be offered including: working on the cataloguing of the archive, working with young people on performance activity, undertaking reminiscence work including supporting and recording of oral histories, digitisation, exhibition and performance support.

Digitised artefacts, oral histories and selected items from the archive will remain within the public domain, for example through theSuffolkNewCollegeweb site or one or both of theSuffolkand Norfolk Records Offices.