Inside the Archive #45: Heritage Open Day reflections part two

It was wonderful to see such a wide range of film conservation activities represented at this year’s Heritage Open Day – from tours of the vaults with Louise and Anthony, who explained the importance of good storage for the long-term preservation of film, to hands-on film handling sessions in the conservation areas with Ana, Karen, Natalia, and Oscar, and the digital inspection of film reels using the Cube-Tec Quadriga INSPECTIONscan tables with Kobby and Milo. Visitors also explored the history of film with Martin and visited the laboratory areas with Chris and Luke.

It’s always a pleasure to share our work, especially when visitors engage with old Technicolor processes, film gauges and the methods of film identification, and ask thoughtful questions. It was particularly rewarding to see young visitors and their parents interested in pathways into film conservation, and to be able to tell them about our new Heritage Innovation Fund traineeships in conservation and archive technology!

– Elena Nepoti (Film Conservation Manager)

Throughout the day, the BFI Reuben Library team could be found in the Conservation Centre boardroom giving presentations. Over sixty people attended the talks and had the chance to take a closer look at a selection of display items.

Senior Librarian, Katie Reddington, spoke about the history of the library and some key figures from its past, including Michael Caine and his suspended ticket from 1962!

I chatted about collection gems, and we had some wonderful material on display including the first issue of Screen International from 1895, the Ken Adams Archive and a Jungle Book pressbook complete with a pop-up scene at the back. Fellow Librarians, Adrienne Rashbrook-Cooper and Rob Munday engaged with visitors, answering their many questions and encouraging people to visit the reading room in person.

It was wonderful to meet so many people and show off the library!

– Eleanor Watkins (Collection Projects Librarian)

The Collections Development team oversees the process of bringing in new acquisitions, including liaising with donors, managing acquisition agreements and cataloguing items. We also work on our historic legacy collections which have not yet been fully processed, identifying items and tracing their histories so that they can be made more fully available for access.

To give visitors a taste of this collections detective work, we set up a display with four (fictional!) collections and invited visitors to sort through some jumbled-up film and video containers, using (carefully invented) clues from labels and collections documentation to match each one to the collection it came from. Our visitors had a great time spotting recurring logos, reconstructing torn labels, speculating on nicknames and deciphering old handwriting. It was a great way to give a hands-on insight into our work, and we may even have found some future archivists in the process!

– Will Greenacre (Curatorial Archivist)

Heritage Open Day is always a fantastic opportunity to share stories from the archives with visitors from far and wide, and this year was no exception! Showcasing the vast wealth of material on BFI Replay is always a joy and never fails to spark conversation and a fair amount of reminiscing. As people arrived, we were on hand to share the story of Replay and showcase some of our newer collections, such as Sporting Action and Silver Screens, alongside perennial favourites like Be Careful Out There, and How We Learned.

It was also amazing to welcome some returning visitors from last year – shoutout to Neil who joined us again from as far afield as Canada! Was he our furthest travelled guest? Perhaps! We must also mention our fiendishly fun Replay quiz, which, in keeping with this year’s architectural theme, asked people to guess the famous buildings featured on BFI Replay. Our biggest takeaway? A black and white image of The Rovers Return on Coronation Street’s very own cobbles showed a clear generational divide! Which side of the generation gap do you fall on?

– Sinéad Beverland (BFI Replay Engagement Officer)

2025 marked 10 years since the BFI National Archive first opened its doors to the public for Heritage Open Day. In its first iteration two tour guides led, starting in the boardroom with a presentation on the BFI’s various activities and the plethora of work carried out at the Conservation Centre. The group were then guided to other areas to enjoy further talks and demonstrations.

The itinerary included the video format vault, a stop at the special collections wall displays, and the Mitchell and Kenyon milk churns in the atrium, before moving to the film vault. Visitors also got a chance to explore film handling with the title Shooting Stars (1928) and a 1” video operating display consisting of the ITV Off-Air programmes, The Russ Abbot Show, Coronation Street, World in Action and News at Ten. The tour concluded with a show reel and presentation in the viewing theatre. All these activities were wrapped up within an hour time slot.

The staff cast and crew in the lead up and on the days included Giles Batchelor, Louise Allum, Hannah Prouse, Tony Richards, Mike Kohler, Espen Bale, Angelo Lucatello, Claire West, Kelly Hyams, Karen Bevan, Martin Sheffield, Martin Coffill, Kat Bishop, Ian Gamble, Richard Sears, John Ireland, Dave Moody, Ron Martin, Helen Edmunds, Charles Fairall, Kieron Webb, Steve Bryant and Robin Baker. The event was co-coordinated by Rachel Pocock & Chloe Trayner.

As this type of public behind-the-scenes had not taken place before, it was decided to practice with friends and family tours. These took place a few days before the open day and cemented the enthusiasm to make the archive accessible in a way it previously hadn’t been. In an email from Gabriel Popp (Head of Collections and Information) to Conservation Centre staff, she wrote, “I am really looking forward to opening our doors to the public, to share the important things we do and enable a wider group of people to experience the excitement of a look behind the scenes at the archive.”

Reflecting on the past 10 years, it’s lovely to see how the open day has come leaps and bounds from those early days!

– Giles Batchelor (Access Officer)

The Inside the Archive blog is supported by the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.