Thu, Apr 07, 2022 page4

• British pop archive to open in Manchester

  • The Guardian
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  An archive’s fabulous treasures, including a Gutenberg Bible, a first folio by William Shakespeare and the oldest known fragment of the New Testament, are to be joined by Ian Curtis’ handwritten lyrics for Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control and a wealth of material that shines a light on Granada TV.

  The John Rylands Research Institute and Library in Manchester, England, has announced plans for the British Pop Archive, which it hopes would become the UK’s largest collection for all aspects of post-World War II popular culture.

  The institute said that Weatherfield, a fictional town in the soap opera Coronation Street, is as important as George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch, and that Curtis should be treated as reverentially as Shakespeare.

  

  Pete Shelley performs with the Buzzcocks in Mexico City on May 19, 2018.

  Photo: AP

  “Obviously, why wouldn’t you?” said Jon Savage, a newly appointed professor of popular culture at the University of Manchester and one of the driving forces behind the project. “But it is a kind of false equivalence. It’s very easy to look at artifacts from 400 years ago and say that’s really important. What we are saying is this is important now. Maybe if more people had kept material from Shakespeare’s time, it wouldn’t just be Shakespeare that we’re talking about.”

  Pop culture had long been treated with the seriousness it deserved, Savage added.

  “People really put their heart and soul into it, so why wouldn’t you take it seriously?” he asked.

  The collection would include the archive of Rob Gretton, a band manager who oversaw the transition of Joy Division into New Order and was a meticulous record-keeper, institute director Hannah Barker said.

  “He kept everything. The archive is enormous, it took up an entire cellar,” said Barker, who is a professor of British history. “I never knew Rob, but I’m assuming he kept these things because he knew they were important.”

  Barker said the idea for a popular culture archive began to form in her head in 2018 after the deaths of The Fall lead singer Mark E. Smith, and Buzzcocks singer and guitarist Pete Shelley.

  “Because I’m a historian who works in archives, I remember thinking: ‘I wonder what happens if these guys had no archive,’” Barker said.

  She met Savage, and the project started to take off. She also read a call in the Guardian by Jill Furmanovsky, one of Britain’s most celebrated music photographers, for a dedicated British rock photography archive.

  “You know when you feel like the universe is whispering to you,” Barker said.

  Many discussions have been taking place, including with photographer Kevin Cummins, who also has a pair of Hacienda trainers, boxed and unworn, in his archive.

  “I know, imagine what a Chorlton dad would do with those,” she said, referring to the Manchester suburb of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

  Also part of the collection would be the archive of Granada TV, shining a light on its dazzling roster of programs including Coronation Street, World in Action, Prime Suspect and, for people who could only dream about going out, The Hitman and Her.

  Savage said there were a lot of pop and youth culture holdings across the UK, but he believed this would be the first specifically designated pop culture archive.

  “The reason is obvious really, pop culture has been incredibly fertile in these islands in the post-war period,” Savage said.

  Manchester, with its rich popular culture history, is the obvious home for the collection, its supporters say.

  It is to open on May 19 with a Manchester-themed exhibition of standout objects.

  The intention is for it to be a British collection, Barker said.

  Lots of discussions were going on about acquiring archives, said Barker, who wants to challenge “the default assumption that things should go to London, that a national collection should be based in London”.

  I’d like to question that,” she said. “There’s a lot going on under the surface, there are lots of conversations and negotiations. We’ve got big ambitions.”
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