A record nine museums, libraries and archives across England have earned an award of Designation for their collections in the most recent Panel meeting. The University of Exeter's Bill Douglas Cinema Museum Collection, functioning as a ‘People’s History’ of cinema, is amongst the latest group to seure the coveted status. The collection spans 400 years – from shadow puppet shows right through to today’s blockbusters. This collections includes memorabilia, posters, fan mags, scripts and more – totalling over 94,000 items.
An award of Designation recognises a particular collection as being of national and / or international importance based on their quality and significance, as assessed by the Designation Panel. Established in 1997, the Designation Scheme shines a spotlight on the excellence, diversity and creativity to be found in museums, galleries and archives across England, and how they enrich our shared cultural lives. An award of Designation means that the importance of the collection can be further demonstrated to funders, researchers and the wider public – all benefitting from a national or internationally recognised collection on their doorstep.
The designation award covers all the holdings of The Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, which is a leading museum of moving image history in the UK. The collection offers a people’s history of the moving image from the 17th century to the present day, using material and visual culture to show how the experiences of both audiences and those involved in making moving images have changed the way we see the world. The museum holds over 95,000 artefacts, both historically important items such as an original Lumière Cinématographe, and original prints of the first panorama in the UK showing London in 1792, but also everyday items across three centuries that demonstrate our relationship to what we see on the screen.
The museum was founded from the collection put together by the renowned filmmaker Bill Douglas and his friend Peter Jewell, which Peter donated to the University of Exeter in the 1990s after Bill’s untimely death. The museum is free and open to everyone every day and attracts researchers from all over the world.
Dr Phil Wickham, the Curator of the museum said; ‘we are absolutely delighted to become designated as a collection of national and international importance by Arts Council England. This reflects both the significance of the artefacts we hold in the museum but also the importance of cinema and the optical media that preceded it on people’s lives over the last three centuries. Bill Douglas and Peter Jewell’s vision was that the wonder of moving images could be shared with everyone, and Designation will help us to take this ambition forward into the future.'
