Scoping Grants funded in 2024–2025
Here are the proposals that were awarded Scoping Grants in 2024–2025, to produce an expert collections report (or scoping report) on a full or partial archival collection.
Bishopsgate Institute
Bishopsgate Institute will use the Archives Revealed Scoping Grant to work with family and friends of photographer Paul Soso to make his incredible archive available to future generations. Paul was a photographer in London’s underground club scene from 2010 until his death in 2020. His thousands of photographs, all stored digitally, document an incredibly vibrant and under-explored creative scene.
Paul was dyslexic and his filing system was chaotic, straddling multiple hard drives, some now broken, with very little information about the people and places in his pictures. With this funding, Bishopsgate and its partners will be able to plan the daunting task of archiving his unique and spectacular collection, including a scheme to source who and what is featured in as many photos as possible.
We’re really pleased that our dad’s work is being given such careful attention. This is the first step in bringing his photography into the spotlight where it belongs.
Mia and Marley Soso
Paul Soso
Theatre de Complicité
Complicité is an international touring theatre company which brings together performers, designers, writers, artists and specialists from diverse fields to create work through extensive periods of research and development – a process known as ‘devising’. Founded in 1983 by Artistic Director Simon McBurney, Annabel Arden, Fiona Gordon and Marcello Magni, the company has grown in scale and reputation to become ‘the most influential and consistently interesting theatre company working in Britain’ (The Times). This scoping grant will allow Complicité to review the contents of its physical, digital and anecdotal archive. After decades of constant creation, the company will explore its wealth of texts, documents, photos, films, writings and correspondence, amassed by numerous artists and producers, and seek to understand their significance.
How can we celebrate nearly 42 years of work? How can we plot the influence of Complicité’s creative process on theatre? And how can we use this to look to the future and discover what we might do next? This scoping grant allows us to understand the possibilities and we’re extremely grateful for the opportunity to begin this work.
Susie Newbery, Executive Director
Sarah Ainslie
Leighton House and Sambourne House
Leighton House is the former home to Lord Leighton (1830-1896), prominent Victorian artist and President of the Royal Academy Frederic. Sambourne House is the family home of Linley Sambourne (1844-1910), cartoonist for Punch magazine. Both house-museums are managed by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), and both contain extensive archives which are to be fully reviewed and scoped for the first time. The museums’ archival collections contain the only records of the museums being created, the origin of the collections and evidence of their connection through the Holland Park Circle – a network of neighbouring artists that built transformative studio-houses from the 1860s onwards, many of which still stand today.
This scoping report will give RBKC a better understanding of the current content and condition of the archives, and indicate what steps are needed to adequately care for them. They also hope to make the collections more accessible, exploring their incredible potential both for audience engagement and art historical research.
We are fortunate to have two such significant archives accompanying our museums. The National Archives grant will be invaluable in enabling us to engage specialist advice and support as we work to integrate these collections more fully into our activities and plan for their future development.
Daniel Robbins, Senior Curator at RBKC Museums
To my own darling mother. From her loving little Maudie.
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea
Liverpool John Moores University
The papers of Gary Everett, Founder and former Artistic Director of LGBTQ+ arts festival Homotopia, contain a wealth of material relating to Liverpool’s LGBTQ+ arts, culture, club scenes and activism in the 1990s-2010s. The collection captures LGBTQ+ existence in Liverpool across three decades, recording ephemeral events and transient moments in the city’s queer life. The material also addresses gaps in archival representation of LGBTQ+ cultural experience beyond the political realm.
Gary Everett is currently the UK Creative Producer for Tom of Finland Foundation Los Angeles. He has a long history of creative work in the mainstream and underground artistic spheres in Liverpool but has also worked nationwide, and internationally.
We’re so pleased to have received a Scoping Grant from The National Archives. It enables us to assess how best to share this important collection through cataloguing, digitisation, and the production of educational, research, and community resources. It will also support the work we are undertaking to expand awareness and collecting of LGBTQ+ archives.
Susannah Waters, Head of Academic Services
Liverpool John Moores University
Pleasance Theatre Trust
The Pleasance Theatre Archive is a significant historic record of one of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival’s most iconic venues, but it is currently unsorted and inaccessible to the public. Dating back 40 years, the archive includes a large collection of original materials relating to the Pleasance branches in both Edinburgh and London. The Pleasance will use this grant to produce a professional scoping report; the first step in preserving and developing the archive. They hope to find a permanent home for the collection both physically and digitally, ensuring lasting public access for future generations.
We’re delighted to have received this Scoping Grant in the run-up to our 40th birthday. We have a treasure-trove of materials just waiting to be explored.
Anthony Alderson, Director
Stan Reilly
The Gardens Trust
The Gardens Trust is dedicated to protecting and conserving historic parks, gardens and designed landscapes in the UK. The charity will use the scoping grant to delve into its archives and assess the scope and significance of its historical records. They hope to uncover materials that illuminate the rich heritage of gardens and landscapes across the country, as well as its own role in conserving that heritage as a unique charity.
This grant offers a remarkable opportunity to explore our archives and uncover treasures we haven’t yet had the chance to examine. We’re excited about the potential discoveries and how this might pave the way for future projects that will deepen our understanding and preservation of these invaluable records.
Linden Groves, Head of Operations and Strategy
Gardens Trust
Chatterley Whitfield Friends
Chatterley Whitfield Friends is a registered charity dedicated to helping maintain Britain’s largest remaining colliery site. Formerly a mine and then a museum, Chatterley Whitfield museum closed in 1993 and all its assets were auctioned off. For unknown reasons, a vast number of maps, books, historical documents and artefacts were not included in the auction. These were later recovered by Chatterley Whitfield Friends and stored in a container, ready to be archived. The Scoping Grant awarded will enable Chatterley Whitfield Friends to understand the historical items in their possession, their relevance to the history of mining, and the best ways of preserving these items for the future.
Chatterley Whitfield Friends have been actively digitising documents and plans which were left at the former mining museum following the auction in 1994. At the time, the administrators saw no historical value in them. It is only through the dedication of the charity’s volunteers that the collection has survived. The Scoping Grant awarded will give us the opportunity to realise the importance of the collection.
Nigel Thomas Bowers BEM, Chair
Chatterley Whitfield
University of St Mark and St John, Plymouth
Plymouth Marjon University has a rich history of championing radical social justice and equality of opportunity; tenets that still live on in their practice today. Having successfully run small archive-based projects with the local community, from social prescribing to memory cafes, they are now excited to expand on these projects and make them even more inclusive and enabling for their wider community. This scoping grant will allow them to seek valuable, expert consultation on the best direction for their archive collections.
I am delighted that Plymouth Marjon University Archive was successful in the bid for a scoping fund from the National Archives. Archives are the bedrock of our society. To unlock their potential for meaningful social change is exciting and a privilege.
Kerry Kellaway, Head of Library
University of St Mark and St John