BFI FAN Screen Heritage Toolkit 2026 – Demystifying Catalogues

This year, FHNI have been looking at the archive catalogue and how, as the first point of call for many exhibitors, it can sometimes be a challenging process for exhibitors to find the material they are looking for. Terms can be obsolete or archaic and material that is of interest can often go unrecorded by the original cataloguers. In developing diverse audiences, navigating catalogues is an important skill, and we hope these resources will help exhibitors in their progamming work.

Chaired by Hugh Odling-Smee and Andy Robson, FHNI invited three representatives from the BFI funded projects for a conversation on the respective projects’ outputs, findings and insights.

For the roundtable we were delighted to be joined by:

• Alex Day, Accessibility Officer on the North West Film Archive’s Accessibility and Disability History project looking to improve access to moving image heritage for disabled and neuro-diverse users and audiences.

• Storm Patterson, London Screen Archive Manager overseeing London Screen Archives (LSA) - Undocumented seeking to address underrepresentation of London’s Black communities, specifically the lack of Black home movies within film archives.

• Elspeth Vischer, Project Coordinator, working on Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive’s Northern Ireland Now - 'Northern Ireland Now: Contemporary Collecting'; addressing underrepresentation particularly the lack contemporary material related to ethnic minorities, diversity of religious belief, disabled people, neurodivergent people, LGBTQIA+ individuals, and working-class communities, especially young men.

You can watch a video recording  of the conversation in full here (duration - 54mins).

It was a fascinating discussion, touching on many areas of exhibition and archives and Andy Robson has written up some of the main takeaways here.

Thanks to all our guests who took part.