The Idea of Chapters

Hove Park, 6th May 2012
 


The Idea of Chapters and the collecting and categorising of the material

Toby

The issue of how to put 30 years of the company's history onto a website in a useable way has been occupying Toby, Ali and the website designer John, particularly over the last month.

It would be possible logistically to put it into a yearly step by step format. That was not felt to be very useful, because it would be quite cumbersome and also it didn't reflect the experience, where many of the shows went on over more than one year, and themes and eras did not cal neatly into an annual picture.

John came up with a promising suggestion to divide the thirty years of NFS into a series of chapters - e.g. Balls up to Every Which Way But Up, 1983 - 1989.

A few reasons for this:

• Dividing into chapters reinforces the feeling that the timeline is telling a story about the development of NFS - it's not just a catalogue of everything that happened but a record of how the company evolved through different phases.
• The final chapter could be 2006 - present, then you can continue to add new things to the timeline. 
• Also propose separating timeline items into categories that can be tagged with icons - to give the timeline itself some visual polish, and to help the user scan the page easily.
• If there's a video introducing every year then 30+ could feel a bit heavy. It's not a problem technically to have so many videos, but for the user it could be overwhelming. (You could keep adding if you were dividing it year by year, but it would look odd if 2016 and 2017 didn't also have video introductions.)

Toby and Ali really liked this suggestion of Chapters. It would make the Digital archive user friendly and easier and more fun to negotiate. Also the themes and evolutions would be clearer to follow. Each chapter could have a video accompaniment that would bring out the main themes for that period.

They worked out how the chapters should be and how many of them, that have become as follows:

Chapter 1      1986 – 88                  Pre-NFSC      

Balls Up uni juggling club, Hay-on-Wye festival, Juggling Conventions etc.

Chapter 2      1988 – 1990              The Arts Play Umbrella years

Every Witch Way But Up,   A Wish Washes Whiter, etc

Chapter 3      1991 – 1997              The Blue Tent years

Take A Chance, Defective Detective, Dodo Island, Totally Wicked, Alice, Treasure Island

Chapter 4     1995                        Autogeddon

The first warehouse, community show

Chapter 5      1997 – 2003              Stepping Stones years

Stepping Stones:  Prophecy; Now.Here; ImMortal (community show)

Chapter 6      2003 – 2007              The ImMortal years

ImMortal in various incarnations;  etc.

Chapter 7      2008 – Present        Outdoor shows

Inside Out; Parklife; Barricade; Open House; etc

Chapter 8      2008 – Present        Tent Shows

ImMortal, Tabu, Bianco, etc

Chapter 9      2011 – Present        Theatre Shows

Mundo Paralelo, Block, Noodles,  etc

It was decided that Autogeddon does not belong with the Blue Tent years, so have given it a chapter of its own, as a turning point.

So this is the ultimate goal for the new website. Before these chapters can be created though, there is a need for a sorting and recording in detail, step by step, year by year. This has mainly been Toby's remit, with help in the process of sorting from volunteers.

In an attempt to get a clear idea of what was happening and when, and what artefacts available, Toby has produces these folders, which allow you to see at a glimpse the people involved at the time, the posters and programmes from shows etc.

There are tour dates as well,

and each folder is constantly being added to as more information comes to light and also as a result of people getting in touch with their memories and facts and artefacts.


The folders have proved invaluable for the group oral history sessions, for both triggering memories and clarifying different facts.

The process is ongoing, but as June continues so that time for finalising the structure for the new website approaches, and lots of effort is going into getting as much detail, from as many people and sources as can be, so that the digital archive will be as accurate and detailed as possible.