London Community Video Archive

video, vhs, archive, london, activism

Based at Goldsmiths, University of London, the London Community Video Archive (LCVA) will preserve, archive and share community videos made in the 1970s/80s in London and the South East. Portable video recording — now a technology routinely embodied in smartphones — became available for the very first time back in the early 1970s, making it possible for individuals and communities to make their own television. The medium was taken up by people ignored or under-represented in the mainstream media – tenants on housing estates, community action groups, women, black and minority ethnic groups, youth, gay and lesbian people, and the disabled. With an overriding commitment to social empowerment and to combating exclusion, 'Community Video' dealt with issues which still have a contemporary resonance — housing, play-space, discrimination, youth arts.

Originated by Heinz Nigg and Andy Porter, and developed by Tony Dowmunt, Heinz Nigg and Andy Porter, with input from Ed Webb-Ingall