Digital archive delivery for V&A research projects.
Working with the world’s leading art and design museum
Why The V&A
“Culture isn't just about art or design, it's about our history, our communities and our shared experiences. That's why we believe that preserving cultural knowledge and heritage is so important.”
Mat Hayward
“Our mission is to be recognised as the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance, and to enrich people’s lives by promoting research, knowledge and enjoyment of the designed world to the widest possible audience”
Performing Glastonbury
In 2020, Glastonbury Festival marked its 50th anniversary. As guardian of the Glastonbury Festival Archive, the V&A received AHRC funding to create an online archive documenting 50 years of the festival’s history: performances, performers, stages, posters, programmes, maps and imagery.
The technical discovery phase established the right approach for handling the scale and complexity of the data. Performance records were stored in AusStage, the international database for performing arts, and Algolia search was used to build a fast, publicly accessible front end with data refreshed nightly. The result is a searchable archive serving both academic researchers and the general public, launched to coincide with the date the 2021 festival would have taken place.
“From beginning to end, Kind brought a huge amount of passion, creativity and technical expertise to the project. They helped shape the approach and delivery to ensure we not only met but exceeded expectations, and faced every challenge with open communication and good humour.”
Culture in Crisis
The V&A’s Culture in Crisis programme supports communities that suffer cultural loss through conflict, criminal acts or natural disaster. Kind was commissioned to build a portal to bring together data on the funding of cultural heritage projects globally, giving funders and heritage organisations a clear picture of where money was going and where it was needed most.
The portal needed its own brand identity, separate from the V&A, and had to be fast, stable and capable of handling large volumes of data input from multiple sources. Algolia search gave users near-instant results across a rapidly growing dataset. The portal is now used by cultural organisations including the British Council, Historic England and Arcadia.
“This free digital resource and our Culture in Crisis programme is a demonstration of the V&A’s ongoing commitment to protecting the world’s cultural heritage and supporting communities that suffer cultural loss. ”
Creswell Digital Archive
K.A.C. Creswell was a pioneer in Islamic architectural history. Between the 1910s and 1960s he photographed thousands of monuments across Egypt, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Turkey and beyond, creating an archive that remains one of the most important primary resources in the field. Many of the structures he documented have since been altered or destroyed, making his photographs irreplaceable records of the built heritage of the Islamic world.
Creswell distributed his archive across five institutions on three continents: the V&A, the Ashmolean, Harvard University, the American University in Cairo and Villa I Tatti. Kind is building a single digital archive that brings these collections together for the first time, allowing researchers worldwide to search and access the full body of work regardless of which institution holds the original.
