SIXTY YEARS OF MASS-OBSERVATION
- a unique record of everyday life in Britain
Mass-Observation exists to record and study everyday life in Britain. The earliest projects involved recruiting members of the public to write about what they saw in the streets, in meetings, dance-halls, cinemas and churches. They also recruited hundreds of people to write diaries. The collection of writings came to Sussex in 1970 at the request of Asa Briggs, the former Vice-Chancellor.
Since then the Archive has carried out a number of projects, ranging from people's observations of street parties during the Queen's Silver Jubilee celebrations to diaries and reports covering people's experiences and opinions during both the Falklands War and the Gulf War. The Mass-Observation Archive currently has over 500 people writing for them at least three times a year. Some writers still keep diaries but most respond in a personal way to themes suggested by the Archive.
MONEY FOR THE MASSES
For sixty years ordinary members of the public have been giving their opinions to Mass-Observation. Recently the National Lottery has come under scrutiny, and many of the Archive's 500 current contributors have anonymously voiced their disapproval of the 'tax on the poor' while confessing to buyng the occasional ticket. Few people openly approve of the lottery, but fewer are those who can resist trying their luck.
The contributors did all recognise, however, that lottery money could be well-used by causes that suffer from chronic under-funding, and they particularly welcomed the Mass-Observation Archive's plan to apply for a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Dorothy Sheridan, the M-OA Archivist, worked hard (with the help of Robin Street of the Development Office and Adrian Peasgood the Librarian) to submit a bid to the Lottery Heritage Fund, and she is delighted with the recent award of nearly £150,000. She sees the grant as a positive use of the public's money. "This is a good cause for the lottery money because it's ordinary people's writing," she says. "It's not an elite archive."
The Lottery money will be vital to keep this unique collection of writings accessible to the public. The intention is to provide two reading rooms for users; a quiet one for individual researchers, and one for visitors, students, group work, exhibitions and teaching. They will also provide more computing and audio facilities to help users find what they need more easily, and technological facilities will be available to enhance access for visitors with special needs.
Perhaps the most important improvement, though, will be the new storage areas. These will be specially designed to allow staff to control the atmosphere of the room, maintaining a low temperature to help preserve the original manuscripts, photos and tapes. "The installation of equipment to control the temperature of our papers is brilliant," says Dorothy Sheridan. "That sort of money would be very difficult to get anywhere else. We have been impoverished for years; just recently we got money from the HE Council to digitise our hand-lists and catalogues and that was the first major injection of funds we'd had for a long time. I don't see where the money would have come from if we hadn't got it from the Lottery."
Dorothy Sheridan understands that, for universities, times are hard. Sussex supports the M-OA without help, even though it is an internationally-used resource. "When times are hard," she says, "the priority is books for undergraduate courses. In order to preserve this collection we had to go for whatever was available."
The Lottery Heritage Fund specifically identified archives as being part of our heritage, and the Sussex Archive is seen as particularly special. Most archives collect writings produced for other purposes, but the M-OA commissions people to write specifically for the Archive - their anonymous contributions are recorded as a commentary on contemporary Britain.
When, thanks to the Lottery money, the Archive is relocated to the top floor of the library building, contributors and users alike will benefit from the new facilities. There are plans to invite people to come and write on-site, and the Heritage Lottery Fund itself could benefit from a visit: gambling has been a major theme of contributions throughout Mass-Observation's history. Much could be learned from a careful study of the British public's enduring passion for a game of chance: back in the 1940's the M-OA wrote a report on behalf of one of the anti-gambling organisations. "It's a kind of irony," says Dorothy Sheridan. "We have so much material on gambling and we get to benefit from it."
Not all contributions were made in writing. This cartoon was drawn in response to a directive about the roles of women and men.
" Ethel, they want to know how I enhance my masculinity"
A NEW SORT OF HISTORY
"We are doing our utmost to ensure that we record the impacts of these world-shaking times in terms of the ordinary people in this country. We believe that in this way we have a special contribution to make to the future of human decency. In our simple way we record history in the making; a new sort of history,"
Mass-Observation Bulletin No. 18, August 1940
Letter from Tom Harrisson, Director of Mass-Observation, to members of the volunteer Mass-Observation Panel in October 1940:
PUT WELL OUT OF BOMB'S WAY
"Every bit of stuff is read, analysed, filed and put well out of bomb's way. We can't publish much now. After the war we promise to tell a unique, almost incredible story. Your help is making, and will make, the piecing together of this story possible."
A Labour Party supporter canvassing for votes in Bolton in 1938. The photograph was taken by Humphrey Spender specifically for Mass-Observation
In 1992 Mass-Observation correspondents were asked to describe the ways in which they visualised the Archive.
Their responses showed a surprising amount of agreement when it came to describing the repository they envisaged for their thoughts, feelings, and experiences.
The Archive was imagined as a large, peaceful and welcoming academic study. Rays of sunlight were imagined filtering through tall university windows into a reassuringly old-fashioned room and creeping their luminescent way through the leaves and petals of the plants on the filing cabinets, sparkling in the inaccessible cobwebs, glinting around the rims of the tea cups, and illuminating the bundles of papers obscuring every inch of desk space in an organised untidiness. Correspondents' imagined ideas of the Archive are very important for what they reveal of the qualities that writers value in someone with whom they are prepared to share their thoughts and feelings.
One observer, Miss H2651, has some reassuring words to offer any of us worried about ageing:
"I am eleven and will soon be twelve in February. I think young means about under twenty-five, but if someone looks quite young and they are 29 I would count them as young. To me middle-aged is 25 to about 40. This comes in with being a parent. Elderly to me seems to come under the same word as old. This is probably because when people are about forty or over they start to get grey hair and even wrinkles. My favourite age so far is probably about eleven because I have started my new school and made many new friends."
Check out the Mass-Observation Archive Website: http://www.susx.ac.uk/Units/library/massobs/homearch.html