Since the Relocating Filmstrips, Remapping Europe project has commenced we have helped archives discover filmstrip materials and connected histories. We have put together a list of their extensive holdings here. The list is regularly updated, as many archives are now regularly searching for filmstrips and filmstrip-related objects.
As a film archive, the BFI decided not to collect filmstrips (this decision was made in the late 1940s-early 1950s). It does, however, have an extensive collection of visual educational publications and periodicals (1940s-1990s), including post-war industrial film and filmstrip catalogues, such as the Monthly Film Review (1940s-1970s), the Monthly Film Strip Review (1948-1950) and Visual Education (1950-1980, that incorporated Monthly Film Strip Review), invaluable for understanding the larger visual culture within which filmstrips thrived. The archive also houses films, such as the Central Office of Information’s Spotlight on the Colonies (1950), that share images with filmstrips, such as Colonial Empire: Battle Against Ignorance (1949).
Bodleian Library, University of Oxford:
The Bodleian has over 80 filmstrips and their booklets. These are largely related to the company Unicorn Head Ltd., with filmstrips from the 1940s and 1950s on civics, science, sports, and practical skills. The library also has some religious filmstrips – stories of famous saints, biblical tails, explanation of rituals – as well as some study packs from the 1970s, made by Oxfam, that also contain filmstrips and discuss the organisation’s work in South America.
The BL has over 400 booklets for filmstrips produced by leading British publishers of the 1940s and 50s, such as British Instructional Films and the Daily Mail School-Aid Department. The library also has over 20 filmstrips and related materials produced by Kodak as part of their instruction in photography series (1960s-1980s). The Kodak materials are part of a larger donation to the Library and help link filmstrips to a broader visual education culture that includes the magic lantern. The Library’s audio-visual collections also contain some BBC Radio-Vision lecture recordings that would be broadcast alongside filmstrip projection in classrooms, as well as some interviews of media persons who used filmstrips. BL also houses educational periodicals (such as Look and Listen [1947-1956] and Monthly Film Strip Review), filmstrip catalogues and guides for filmstrip producers and operators. Finally, the British Library’s India Office papers discuss the Central Office of Information’s production and distribution of photography in picture-sets, feature sets, posters, and filmstrips across India but also in Britain’s other imperial and commonwealth territories.
While not an archive in the traditional sense, 1000s of filmstrips and related materials – discovered in attics, basements, or other forgotten corners of homes, schools, and offices – are regularly sold on the platform. These filmstrips are often sold without any contextual information but nonetheless show the extent to which filmstrips were used across the world, as well as the wide variety of topics that filmstrips covered.
The IWM holds over 100 filmstrips and booklets, as well as related catalogues. This includes Ministry of Information filmstrips from the Second World War, and multiple series used for UK military training (1940s-1970s). There are filmstrips and booklets related to training at the Royal Air Force, at the Royal Navy, at the Defence Intelligence Security School, and for Civil Defence. The IWM collection also contains filmstrips from the United States of America, used for military training during the war, and filmstrips produced by the German Reich’s Propaganda Ministry, and those for the SS and Hitler Youth gatherings. There are also films showcasing the benefits of using filmstrips (e.g. The Use of Instructional Film and Filmstrips [1944]) and other films that closely align with the materials produced for filmstrips (e.g. Proudly Presenting Yong Peng [1954] which has similar images and topics to the filmstrip New Village in Malaya [1954]). The IWM would later adapt versions of its filmstrip collections and send them to schools for use in classroom teaching.
The IoE, which is part of UCL Special Collections, houses close to 400 filmstrips and related materials. These include over 200 filmstrips, connected texts and artworks, advertising materials, press cuttings and business and distribution information, for filmstrips produced and distributed by Marian Ray through her company Marian Ray Filmstrips (1940s-1980s). Ray’s records offer a rare insight into the often-overlooked independent filmstrip market. The IoE also holds over 200 filmstrips and booklets, which were donated from King Edward VI school in Birmingham. These materials cover human geography and social history, and were produced by organisations including the US War Office, the Daily Mail, G.B. British Instructional, British Instructional Films, Common Ground, and BBC Radio-Vision. The archive also has school masters’ reports discussing the success of American filmstrips sent by the US Government, at different British schools.
Museum of English Rural Life and University of Reading Special Collections (MERL):
MERL has over 200 filmstrips and lecture notes related to agriculture from the 1940s-1980s. Particularly prominent is the filmstrip collection from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. The museum also holds connected materials, including periodicals, pamphlets, production papers, photographs and 16mm films that often showcase how filmstrips sought to work alongside other media to communicate and train British farmers. MERL also houses documentation – author agreements, master scripts, artworks and, of course, filmstrips – related to one of Britain’s foremost filmstrip companies, Common Ground. The documentation is invaluable in tracing Common Ground’s global impact (1940s-1980s) on visual education. Moreover, these documents survive as Common Ground was absorbed by the educational book publishers Longman. It is as part of Longman’s donations of their papers to MERL that Common Ground’s history also survives. MERL’s collections here also foreground the filmstrip’s connection to print media history.
National Library of Scotland (NLS):
The NLS holds close to 1000 filmstrips – in many cases, alongside accompanying lecture notes – produced between 1940s-1990s. These include the Ministry of Education’s postwar school meals series, an extensive collection of filmstrips made by the Colonial Office for exhibition across the British Empire, filmstrip collections from the National Parks Commission, the Home Office Fire Department, and the Home Office Civil Defence Department (many of which deal with the threat of the atomic bomb during the cold war era). Further, the Library houses over 20 filmstrips that were used as part of the BBC Radio-Vision programme (that combined school radio broadcasts with filmstrip projection) and more than 200 produced by major private companies or foreign producers such as Common Ground, Unicorn Head, or the National Film Board of Canada, that were used to instruct on civics, history, science, and practical and industrial skills. Filmstrips also appear as part of collections relating to individuals or organisations. For instance, as part of its papers on Ritchie Calder the NLS has lecture notes for filmstrips Calder made for UNESCO. Similarly, the NLS has a significant collection of religious filmstrips, notably within its collections from the Church of Scotland, which have a particular emphasis on missionary activities overseas. It also has some Disney filmstrips that reflect the popularity of the medium in the toy market. The NLS holds picture books, pamphlets, wall-charts, textbooks, maps, and posters that were frequently used alongside filmstrips or that reused or reproduced the same images as those on the filmstrip. Finally, the NLS has educational magazines such as Film User (1946-1980), Visual Education (1950-1980), and Look and Listen, that provide extensive records of the use of filmstrip and its broader place in postwar visual instruction.
Nuffield College, University of Oxford:
As part of its collections on the socialist thinker, scholar, and educator, G.D.H. Cole, Nuffield College houses over 100 Common Ground filmstrips and lecture notes, as well as related materials. These filmstrips were either made directly by him – with their content often adapted from his books – or supervised by him. The related documentation also contains discussions regarding the form and structure of each filmstrip as well as some preliminary sketches.
The Neurath Collection contains over 40 filmstrips, lecture booklets, artworks, and production papers (1940s-1980s). These strips were made at the Isotype Institute founded by Otto and Marie Neurath, with the latter serving as the head of the institution for over 40 years. Marie Neurath’s filmstrips, based on the Isotype system of graphic communication, were mostly produced by Common Ground. The Isotype Institute made filmstrips for adults and for children. Here, the filmstrips and related materials also connect to the Institute’s work on children’s picture books, often on topics such as nature, history, and archaeology.
The RAF has over 400 filmstrips, produced between 1940-1970, which cover a variety of subjects, including meteorology, aircraft recognition, RAF history, and various technical subjects used for direct instruction. Although some of the filmstrips originate with the RAF or Air Ministry, others were produced by the British Army, Royal Navy, Home Office and Ministry of Information. The collection also includes a filmstrip projector and various filmstrip catalogues.
The Museum’s collection of close to 100 filmstrips are rich and varied. These include sets produced for the Ministry of Food in the immediate aftermath of War, others for hospitals and educational institutions, and a collection of Sunday Times Current Affairs Filmstrips (1966-1975). They also hold some accompanying booklets and records. A particularly valuable and unusual aspect at the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford, is the collection of viewers, projectors and equipment used for the exhibition of filmstrips, as well as the museum’s collection of British trains and transport related media (including filmstrips).
TNA houses an extensive collection of written records relating to filmstrip production, policy, circulation and exhibition. These include COI and Colonial Office Records – including surveys and details on the supply of filmstrips and projectors across the British Empire – as well as production notes, educational schemes, and materials relating to other areas, such as health and defence, as well as the transport industry, the coal industry, and the fisheries industry. TNA also holds related visual media and artworks (such as the Dixon-Scott photographs that were used by the COI in their work) and contains documents on visual education planning, particularly via papers about the National Council for Visual Aids in Education, the National Council for the Preparation and Production of Visual Aids, and the Educational Foundation for Visual Aids.
United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO):
Across its paper, photograph, film, and sound archives, UNESCO has materials for over 100 filmstrips, many of which were made by the organisation (1950s-1970s) These materials largely exist as lecture notes for filmstrips (many of which are digitised), with, more unusually, a few audio-recordings used for filmstrip lectures also collected. The organisation has recently discovered more than 50 additional filmstrips. These include the UNESCO Human Rights filmstrips (c.1950), filmstrips UNESCO made for use in Mexico and Haiti, and educational filmstrips made by other organisations from the United States, Britain, France, and Belgium, amongst others. Filmstrips used by UNESCO generally promoted learning and literacy, health and hygiene, industry and infrastructure, and history and heritage, to foster peace and mutual understanding across nations. These filmstrips are of global interest as UNESCO widely distributed them as part of its educational programmes. For instance, there are hand-drawn filmstrips made by a local Haitian artist, Remponeau, which were used in Haitian villages. However, the technique used to make them was first devised by the Scottish animator and filmmaker Norman McLaren in rural China and was later successfully exported to other rural contexts across the world, such as India. UNESCO also contains an extensive collection of documents, manuals, photographs, and films (many of which are digitised), that reveal the incredible extent to which filmstrips – and connected media such as films and posters – were used to engender global peace and development after the Second World War.
University of Cambridge Library:
As part of the Library’s Church Army Papers, there are 20 filmstrips and related texts (1950s-1970s) – for missionary, biblical, and public education subjects – made by the missionary organisation. The Library also has periodicals, annual reports, and other documents from the Church Army (1890s-1980s) that help position the organisation’s filmstrip use within its wider culture of visual education. The materials also offer statistics that show how extensive the Church Army’s use of the filmstrip was in the second half of the twentieth century.
University of Exeter’s Special Collections and their Bill Douglas Cinema Museum:
There are 4-5 fairy-tale filmstrips at Exeter alongside some toy projectors that help highlight the breadth of filmstrip use beyond the classroom. The Cinema Museum also has books and periodicals that are useful to understand the historical place of filmstrips in Britain. The Special Collections at the University also have papers of the Commonwealth institute that discuss the Institute’s use of filmstrips (1940s-1960s), and their relationship with the Institute’s lantern-slide collections (filmstrips were often used to copy lantern-slide images to store those images on a safer and more durable medium than glass). These documents help place the filmstrip within a longer visual culture lineage.
West Yorkshire Archive Service, Wakefield:
The Archive has over 40 Civil Defence Filmstrips made during the 1950s.
Featured Image: Museums of Today and Tomorrow (UNESCO, c.1960). Courtesy UNESCO Archives.