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HELPING TO PASS IT ONA two-year project by Lavant Valley DFAS Heritage Volunteers has proved invaluable to Chichester Festival Theatre. The 30 volunteers extracted data from over 4,500 press cuttings, dating from the foundation of the theatre in the 1960s, and built a digital archive as part of the theatre’s production archive (called Pass It On) – a total of 1,190 hours of work, worth £17,800*. “Very few of us had done archiving before and I had always thought of it as a rather dry and tedious activity. How wrong can one be?” comments Liz Juniper, Lavant Valley’s HV Representative. “A tremendous esprit de corps developed during the two years and new friendships were forged.”One session yielded a surprise when a volunteer saw a picture of her thespian mother-in-law on the front page of a 1962 local paper. Other cuttings, both local and national, brought back personal memories of the fundraising, architectural controversy, opening night, early seasons and productions with Olivier as Artistic Director, and working at the theatre. The archive is now available online (go to goo.gl/fBUxmZ), allowing worldwide public access to the rich history of the theatre, which is useful for students, historians, researchers, authors, the press and the public, as well as theatre staff. It is possible to search by many different fi lters, including production, review, people, architecture, event – and even theatre controversies! ■ 10 Heritage Volunteers from Edinburgh DFAS and Border DFAS are cataloguing over 3,000 items diffi cult. The original register was scant, at best. This was where the Castle Trust turned to NADFAS for help. For the past year, ten Heritage Volunteers from Edinburgh DFAS and Borders DFAS have met twice a month for at least four hours at a time, and the work is ongoing. The Trust paid for training by a professional cataloguer. The volunteers’ role is to photograph, measure and describe every item, then input the information into a computer programme that can be integrated with specialist museum cataloguing systems. This will allow museums and scholars to explore the collection.Ray Cartwright, Group Leader of the Borders DFAS Heritage Volunteers, says the project is “very enjoyable and full of challenges”. Without the help of Ray and the team, this collection would not have had a future. Now, these important fragments of our history will be able to fi nd new homes, and will be available for generations to come. ■30 Heritage Volunteers from Lavant Valley DFAS spent 1,200 hours digitally archiving 4,500 theatre press cuttings “During their time on the Pass it On project, the Lavant Valley DFAS volunteers contributed just short of 1,200 hours, which totals almost 150 days’ worth of time, which we are exceptionally grateful for.” LOUISE RIGGLESFORD COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS MANAGER, CHICHESTER FESTIVAL THEATRE*Assuming a notional mean hourly pay rate of £14.95. Source: UK mean hourly earnings excluding overtime (Office of National Statistics: 2015 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings).HERITAGE VOLUNTEERING THE ART OF GIVING — 05