People Make Television
28 January to 26 March 2023
Image: ‘Liberation Films: Starting to Happen’, Open Door, BBC2, 1974.
BBC copyright content reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.
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Raven Row re-opens after a five year hiatus with an exhibition of DIY television from the 1970s. Remarkably, much of this emerged from a fringe department of the BBC – the Community Programme Unit (CPU). Set up in 1972, the CPU provided a camera crew and studio, and handed over complete editorial control, to groups and individuals with ‘voices, attitudes and opinions’ hitherto ‘unheard or seriously neglected’, so they could make their own programmes.
Several hundred campaigning and community groups, and individuals, representing amongst myriad others anarchists, farm workers, Black teachers, women priests, office cleaners, radical housing associations, trans women, ex-cons, situationists, film co-ops, neurodiverse people, freethinkers and channelers of the extra-terrestrial, produced autonomous material that was broadcast on BBC2 between 1973 and 1983 in a series called Open Door. This exhibition features over 100 Open Door programmes (from a total of 243), almost none of which have been seen since their original broadcast. This raw, often formally inventive television comprises a vivid archive of social history, and direct testimony of the concerns and struggles of a tumultuous decade.
Simultaneously to the beginning of what became known as public access television on the BBC, the UK government granted licences enabling commercial cable companies to add a channel of local content alongside the national and regional channels they offered to subscribers. The programmes they produced, with skeleton crews, volunteers, community activists and artists, reveal the possibilities of hyper-local television. These groundbreaking communication experiments, however, were short-lived. Five of the six licenced channels lasted no more than a few years. While much of their output has been lost, this exhibition reveals rare footage from Bristol, Sheffield, Swindon and Milton Keynes.
At Raven Row, visitors can browse the vast array of material in an installation designed by Jones Neville, select programmes from sofas and armchairs, and explore the archive in a mediatheque.
People Make Television is curated by Lori E. Allen, William Fowler, Matthew Harle and Alex Sainsbury.
Texts
Events
Exhibition view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo by Marcus J. Leith
Opening view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo Eva Herzog
‘The Basement Project Film Group: East End Channel 1’, Open Door, BBC2, 1973
BBC copyright content reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.
Exhibition view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo by Marcus J. Leith
‘Black Teachers’, Open Door, BBC2, 1973
BBC copyright content reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.
Exhibition view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo by Marcus J. Leith
‘Cleaners’ Action Group’, Open Door, BBC2, 1973
BBC copyright content reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.
Opening view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo Eva Herzog
‘The Whetley Voice’, Open Door, BBC2, 1974
BBC copyright content reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.
Exhibition view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo by Marcus J. Leith
‘The Whetley Voice’, Open Door, BBC2, 1974
BBC copyright content reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.
Exhibition view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo by Marcus J. Leith
Opening view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo Eva Herzog
Opening view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo Eva Herzog
Exhibition view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo by Marcus J. Leith
‘The Wages for Housework Campaign: All Work and No Pay’, Open Door, BBC2, 1976
BBC copyright content reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.
Exhibition view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo by Marcus J. Leith
‘Advertising Promotion’, Sheffield Cablevision, 1975
Copyright and courtesy Malcolm Waring
Exhibition view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo by Marcus J. Leith
Opening view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo Eva Herzog
Opening view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo Eva Herzog
Opening view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo Eva Herzog
‘On Behalf of the People’, Swindon Viewpoint, 1984
Copyright and courtesy Swindon Viewpoint
Exhibition view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo by Marcus J. Leith
Exhibition view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo by Marcus J. Leith
Opening view, Raven Row, London, 2023
People Make Television
Photo Eva Herzog