11-7-19 Digitation at the Courtauld

Digitisation outreach and engagement
activities within Courtauld Connects



Courtauld Connects
Sharing the Courtauld Experience

The Courtauld is a specialist university with a world-famous
art collection and celebrated Gallery; The Courtauld
operates on an intimate scale yet has a global impact.

The Courtauld is poised to launch the biggest programme of
development in its history. Courtauld Connects is an ambitious
five-year capital project and programmatic initiative. People are
at the centre of everything that we do and Courtauld Connects
has been designed to ensure that we maintain this focus whilst
stewarding our founder, Samuel Courtauld’s vision of `art for all’
into the 21st Century.

Whilst we renovate our physical space academics will continue
to teach students and carry out research projects at temporary
facilities in Vernon Square. Our collection will tour nationally
and internationally and our library will remain open whilst over
3 million images are digitised and published online.

Cover: Digitisation volunteers in the studio
Opposite: Anthony Kersting, Yazidi woman, photographed in Lalish, Kurdistan, 1942

Digitisation outreach and development
Volunteers

The Courtauld holds the largest and We currently have 174 signed-up
most significant photographic library volunteers and will increase 400 by
of art, architecture and sculpture Summer 2019.
in the word. The collections are of
global reach and of wide significance Of those volunteering now, a third
to diverse audiences; from the public had never heard of the Courtauld
to schools and academia. before starting.

We will digitise, conserve and publish The team is diverse, already
these collections online for users exceeding end-of-projects targets
who will be able to view, comment set by the HLF for age, ethnicity and
and download them free of charge. occupational background.
A pilot project has been concluded
successfully and now 1.4 million We have worked in partnership with
images are now being digitised on- CoolTan, a charity run by and for
site by a team of volunteers. adults with experience of mental
health conditions.
www.cooltanarts.org.uk

All work is carried out in a studio
situated close to the library space.

The project will take 4 years.

The reward is learning skills to
enhance employability, the sense of
discovery of working in an archive, as
well as joining the Courtauld family.

A volunteer writes:

“Once both my children started
school I decided to volunteer as a
way of building my self-confidence
and also doing something for myself
that I enjoy and fitting it around
school hours so I can bring up my
children as well.”

Open day for prospective volunteers, 16 January 2017

2018/19 Volunteer Cohort

Digitisation outreach and development
Activities

Cataloguing and sharing Regional tour

A new digital collections Touring the country in a mobile studio
management system encompassing equipped with digital recording
digital archiving and preservation, equipment, and spending a week
image management, cataloguing, in each of the 10 former Courtauld
publishing, rights managed licensing, factory sites collecting oral histories of
print on demand, AI-enhanced local architecture. This project will
searching, and free downloads include the production of laser cut
for non-profit use. The system copy stands to turn thousands of
will support an online campaign mobile phones into archival recording
encouraging members of the public to cameras, and will be preceded by
share their views on the digitised a series of digital skills / oral history
images. This will be facilitated by workshops held in public libraries in
tutorials and will collect a new type of each region.
cataloguing never found in museum
collections: keywords, transcriptions,
recollections and reminiscences.
The initiative will be fostered in
each of the 10 Courtauld factory
sites with project staff convening
meet-ups and events for participants
in person and then rolled out
nationally (and internationally) and
ultimately facilitated entirely online.
Special focus will be on developing
cataloguing strategies for children to
challenge the ways in which
adults’/ art historians interpret art and
architecture.

Volunteer engagement app We’ll work again with Founders and
Coders to build a fully featured app,
As part of the development phase which will:
activities of the project, we asked
students at Founders and Coders to Provide detailed reports on the
build a prototype web application progress of the project as a whole,
that would support and enhance the as well as for the individual volunteer
volunteer experience. Founders and so they can visualise the significance
Coders CIC is a UK-based non- of their contribution in reaching our
profit that develops and runs tuition- shared goals.
free, peer-led training programmes
in web development, guided by core Help volunteers to communicate
values of cooperation, inclusion and through the app, commenting on
social impact. They operate in one another’s posts and sending
London and work with Mercy Corps messages.
and the UK government to deliver
programmes in the Middle East and Improve the user interface to facilitate
Africa. usage by all volunteers, who vary by
age and technical ability.
www.foundersandcoders.com
Draw together volunteers based on
location.

Ensure that a contract to cover
technical support, hosting and
enhancements is in place for the next
5 years.

Volunteer visits to the Courtauld’s paper
conservation studio

Our collections

The photographic collections being Anthony Kersting’s archive
digitised by volunteers as part of the over 160,000 images documenting
HLF-funded activities of Courtauld architecture of almost every European
Connects comprise: country, Asia, New Zealand, the
Middle and Far East. Highlights
The Conway Library include:
almost a million images dating from
the inception of photography to the Iraq in the 1940s (including Kurdistan
present day. Highlights include: and the Yazidi people), Syria and
Israel
1850s prints of Istanbul by James
Robertson (from a collection of c. Urban and village life, landscape,
15,000 historic prints) commerce, transport and leisure

T. E. Lawrence’s images of Saudi Buildings and cityscapes that have
Arabia since been damaged or destroyed,
e.g. Aleppo and Palmyra
The Macmillan archive of bomb
damage across Europe following the Extensive coverage of urban and
Second World War rural architecture across the UK and
Europe from 1200 to 2000.
20th century social housing: Tecton,
Park Hill Flats amongst many others.

\

St Malo, 1944. From the Macmillan Commission images in the Conway Library

The De Laszlo Collection of Paul Charles Jagger in the studio, Laib Collection
Laib Negatives The Precinct, Coventry, Conway Library
over 20,000 glass plate negatives
depicting works by many of the major
artists working in Britain between
1900 and 1945. Highlights include:

Society portraitists such as Phillip
De Laszlo, John Singer Sargent and
Oswald Birley

Younger contemporaries such as John
Piper, Barbara Hepworth and Ben
Nicholson

Images of artists at work in their
studios such as Jacob Epstein and
Charles Jagger.





Find out more

Our blog
blog.courtauld.ac.uk/digitalmedia

The project on social media
twitter.com/courtaulddigmed
facebook.com/groups/courtauldvolunteers
instagram.com/courtaulddigitisation

Our volunteer management site
timecounts.org/courtauldvolunteers

Courtauld Connects contact:
Laura Palmer
[email protected]
M) 07812340661