Projects
Here you can find out in more detail about my work for two of the UK's leading cultural heritage digitisation and access projects
- Tate Archives & Access Project
- Unlocking Our Sound Heritage, the British Library
Tate Archives & Access Project
2016 - 2017
About the project
The largest open access archive project undertaken by a UK gallery of in-copyright work at the time, Tate's Archives & Access project took the largest archive of British art in the world and made it accessible to national and international online audiences, through an ambitious programme of digitisation, learning and participation.
Image: Boy with a bicycle wheel (c) Estate of Nigel Henderson. Licensed: Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND
My Role
I managed the IPR work stream for the largest archive digitisation and access project then undertaken by a UK national gallery of in-copyright work and artists, clearing over 52,000 unique objects and working with over 1000 rights holders worldwide for online and further use by internal and external stakeholders. I delivered the most successful access to content, both in terms of volume and licensing, for a Heritage Lottery Fund digitisation project ever achieved, doing so under budget and on time. The project frameworks have now been adopted as the HLF model for all their future funding projects. For the full details please see My CV
Successes
- 99.75% of all content cleared for online publication (51, 870 items) as well as Gallery exhibition, educational and publicity use
- I successfully negotiated with rights holders to additionally deliver over 80% of all content under Creative Commons - far in excess of predicted project outcomes
- Successfully negotiated licensing agreements with the UK’s key artist collecting societies and 1000+ separate rights holders delivering all project goals under budget
- The collecting society agreements delivered a sustainable model for licensing archival content for Tate as well as the wider cultural heritage sector
- Delivered IP training to network partners. Project evaluators reported participants knowledge levels as the most improved of all project training delivered
- Authored Tate's 'Brief Guide to Copyright': A basic introduction to copyright for those new to the subject. The guide was produced as part of a series of copyright learning resources. These resources were created to help deliver copyright workshops for Tate Learning Partners as part of the Heritage Lottery Funded Archives and Access project.
Making Art Common
This is an article I wrote for Tate about the Archives and Access project and Creative Commons encouraging users and communities to access the material.
You can read the article on Tate's site by clicking on this link
Image: Josef Herman 'Sketch of the Bus Stop' (c) Estate of Josef Herman Licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND
Rights, Risks and Relationships
I presented at the MLAG (Museums, Archivists and Libraries Group) Conference on managing rights for mass digitisation projects.
To listen to my presentation - here's the link: Rights, Risks and Relationships
Unlocking Our Sound Heritage, British Library
2016 - 2017
About the project
A major £18.8 million access and preservation project to save 1/2 million unique sound recordings for the nation. The material spans a vast range of content type acquired over decades, from pop and radio broadcasts to drama, world and traditional music, ethnographic and culturally sensitive content, classical works, wildlife and environmental sound and oral histories, engaging a multiplicity of highly complex licensing, intellectual property and data protection considerations including ethical evaluations associated with sensitive cultural materials.
Image: His Master's Voice Francis Barraud (1856 - 1924)
My Role
As Project Rights Officer for the development phase I was responsible for devising all IPR and sensitive content legal, risk and production frameworks for the project, associated resource planning and securing institutional buy-in for these approaches. This work was instrumental in successfully reframing funder expectations of core delivery and budget requirements and helped secure a successful R2 funding bid with increased project resources.
Successes
- Led on the development of end-to-end risk frameworks for IPR and sensitive content and project IPR and data protection workflows, ensuring the efficient use of project resources and delivering pragmatic, legally compliant corporate responsibility profiles for implementation across multiple departments.
- Led on the development of project IPR metadata and cataloguing standards for sound recordings across all project content type. These standards have now been adopted as the base line standard for corporate IPR and sensitive content requirements in sound recordings.
- Led on the development and delivery of efficient technical solutions for capturing and managing the complex rights and sensitive content data generated by project content, saving the project thousands of work hours.
- Delivered key reports on rights and sensitive content to the Project Board and HLF briefings, resulting in a successful re-negotiation of core delivery commitments and financial support with the HLF (the project funders) and influencing corporate and project approaches.
- Created and oversaw pilot studies for data protection and sensitive content and cataloguing workflows.
- Delivered curatorial and project briefings to funders and internal stakeholders.
- Developed IPR and sensitive content training materials in sound recordings for library and Project partners.