Working on the York Theatre Royal Archives
Jules Hiraeth reflects on her work placement at the YSJ archives.
As a second-year student taking an English literature and film studies course, I had the honour to explore the archives of York St John university as part of my Literature at Work module placement. Throughout this experience I managed to organise and categorise a variety of items belonging to both the York Royal Theatre archive and the university’s own historical archive. The diversity of the artefacts allowed the experience to never get stale, always providing new tasks and as a result nurturing my innate curiosity.
The York Royal Theatre experience
My role mainly focused on cataloguing items belonging to the York Theatre Royal, specifically set photographs, actor portraits, magazine cut-outs and music scores. I found this particularly fascinating as a film student, especially whenever I happened to come across a photograph of a film set among the theatre ones, or finding piano and vocal scores from musicals I already knew of, such as “A spoonful of sugar” from Mary Poppins or Cinderella’s “Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo”.
Although I was unfamiliar with the world of theatre, I was still excited to learn about it. I was happy to explore pieces of local history, as well as making sure that the art and culture of York could survive the passage of time and still remain accessible to the public. I especially enjoyed drawing connection between the artefacts in my hands and my passion for cinema: the annotated scripts and behind the scenes photographs reminded me of my own back in college, when I used to work on my own personal projects and productions. As well as reflecting on the importance of preservation, I also had a good time just observing each item I came across, doing the occasional Google research on plays, actors, films, directors and songs out of pure curiosity. After some time, it was interesting to notice the links between certain names and projects, such as the same composers appearing on multiple music sheets, or specific actors being featured in different plays, but my personal favourite was coming across a music score from the film “Seven brides for seven brothers”, which I recognised straight away as part of one of the folders containing stage performance photographs.
The York St John Historical Archive
This experience revealed itself to be more than just theatrical artefacts, and in fact I had the pleasure of also going through a box of recent donations, belonging to former students at the Ripon Training College: sisters Della Wanford (7th August 1905 – 13th October 1992) and Gladys Ivy (8th July 1908 – 10th February 1995). Even though it was a completely different assortment of items and documents compared to what I had been looking at beforehand, the personal notebooks and embroidery projects of the sisters quickly became very dear to me. As I skimmed through the pages and read the stories, notes, poetry verses and seen the collages of magazine cut-outs and handmade sewing guides, I was pleasantly surprised to be reminded of myself. I began to think about my own personal diary, poetry and story drafts, university lecture notes and cut-outs from magazines I cannot seem to be able to let go of, and the connection I felt towards the sisters through these objects reinforced my strong feelings towards archives and the overall preservation of history. I thought especially about physical items, worn down by time and fragile, and felt glad that these fragments of history could find a safe resting place in the York St John Historical Archive, carefully handled by people who see their value.
I reflected upon the importance of these collections as reminders of the individuals who are no longer with us, to help us picture their lives and how different they might have been, but ultimately allowing us to look at the similarities between past and present, and realizing that perhaps some things never change. Decades apart, we continue to keep diaries, we handwrite our notes (sometimes!), we take part in manual activities such as sewing and embroidery, not only out of necessity and because it is a practical skill, but also in the pursuit of art and in the hopes that it may last long after we’re gone. And of course, we still doodle in our free time, just like one of the sisters who upon finding this strip of thin paper decided to draw the end of a staircase and a garden in bloom, either portraying a scene she saw in real life, or perhaps inspired by the magazine pages she kept, ones containing multiple articles revolving around home decor and design.
Concluding thoughts
Overall, I have found my time at the archive to be invaluable beyond the simple work experience I needed for my module, as it allowed me to look at objects and documents I would have otherwise never come across, and that led me to gain a new outlook on my life. I now feel even more proud of myself for collecting posters, magazine and book cut-outs, postcards and more, and I wonder if one day they will ever become useful to someone, or if they will simply go through them all and smile, being reminded of themselves and their own personal collections, sometime far in the future.
Career wise, I am still unsure if I would pursue this kind of role as a full time job, but for now I feel simply grateful for the opportunity to give it a try and develop a deeper understanding about the tasks and responsibilities that come in this field of work. Regardless, I believe my time here has still helped me develop some wonderful skills such as attention to detail, proofreading, and learning how to use and navigate an Excel sheet. However, I have also been inspired to look into an opportunity to work in a film archive next, as I believe that my passion and knowledge on the media, combined with my innate passion for the preservation of history, would prove to be more useful in that field.
By Jules Hiraeth
