About the Backstage Heritage Collection
This section of the website is brought to you by a group of passionate theatre technical folk who have realised that much of their heritage is being discarded and replaced with new technologies. We've started gathering together other interested parties, and are now cataloguing and logging equipment which is still in existence, with a view to finding ways to display it and enable folk to visit it and reflect on where current technologies first emerged, and how they have evolved (or been forgotten) over time. We'd love you to help us on our endeavours.
The Backstage Heritage Collection website began as the Strand Archive, cataloguing the history of Strand Lighting in the UK. And before it was a website, it was a A3 size poster of Strand lanterns (below).
The database which runs the site how has a complex structure, where there are relationships between different sections. The structure of the database is shown below.
Explore the Archive:
Equipment listings can be found by Manufacturer.
You can also look through specific Collections which are the containers for documents, photographs and exhibits.
A simple search can be carried out in the main site search box above right.
Use a single word as the search term (e.g. search for Cantata rather than Cantata Profile or Strand rather than Strand Electric).
You can also search for a particular product using the manufacturer name then the product (e.g. ETC Express or Strand Cantata).
Members of the Backstage Heritage Group at present:
- David Fitch
- Shane Guy
- Rob Halliday
- Jim Laws
- Chris Nicholls
- Jon Primrose
- Jane Thornton
- Robin Townley
- Jason Williams
This group is hoping to catalogue much of the old kit that remains in and around entertainment venues around the world, with a view to making it visible and, in some cases, functional once more. Our model will be a distributed museum where the entire collection can be viewed online, and exhibits can be visited in venues, meeting rooms, waiting rooms, pubs and foyers around the world. More information to follow