Falmouth University awarded research grant to archive performance practice

Falmouth University has been awarded £850,000 in research funding to undertake an immersive archives project capturing Cornwall’s cultural heritage.

The project will use cutting-edge technologies to capture and archive performance practice, exploring new ways to widen access and provide new income streams to support Cornwall’s creative industries.

The funding comes from the AHRC's Creative Research Capability Fund, part of UK Research and Innovation.

GWITHA, from the Cornish word to guard, or to keep, will establish an open centre for immersive approaches to archival practice in the performance space. The project aims to capture and preserve performances that have previously been difficult or impossible to document because of their transient nature. 

Cornwall is renowned for site-specific landscape theatre that is challenging to document and record, making the project particularly relevant in a local context.

The project will employ technologies including augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality, working with artists and performance companies to capture sound and vision in three dimensions.

It will also use the archives housed at Falmouth University to build a digital infrastructure capturing the collections of material objects, textual artefacts and the documentation of performance practice, with a goal of improving access and developing strategies for new income streams from these new digital assets in support of local creative industries.

“We are committed to being the leading university for the nexus of creativity and technology and I can’t think of a project that would encapsulate this better,” said Emma Hunt, Falmouth University Vice Chancellor.
 
Dr Lee Miller, Head of Postgraduate Research at Falmouth University said the project “will allow Falmouth to build a sector leading approach to the capturing, preservation and accessing of resistant archival objects. 

“It will also provide an infrastructure to better capture and share Cornwall’s intangible cultural heritage,” he added.