LIFT Living Archive

File O by Xi Ju Che Jian Theatre (LIFT 95)
Photo Han Lei
LIFT Launch by Anne Bean and Paul Burwell (LIFT 93)
Photo Patricia Crummay
The Tower Project by Deborah Warner, (LIFT 99)
Photo Michael O'Brien
La Negra Ester by El Gran Circo Teatro (LIFT 89)
Photo Michael O'Brien

Having staged pioneering theatre events in London for over a quarter of a century, LIFT has amassed a wealth of material now housed in the Special Collections Library at Goldsmiths, University of London, and online at liftlivingarchive.com just waiting to be explored.

Within the LIFT Living Archive are documents, photographs, objects and recordings which provide an extensive learning source and an insight into not just the performances seen at LIFT, but also the negotiations and planning which makes the festival happen.

Stretching all the way from LIFT's inception in 1981 to 2001, LIFT Living Archive is a treasure trove for academics, artists and anyone with an interest in how LIFT and contemporary theatre has developed. Yet the LIFT Living Archive aims not to bury this illustrious past in boxes or databases for posterity, but to unearth fresh forms of thinking from what has gone before.

Those who visit LIFT Living Archive either in person or online are encouraged to make their own connections between the material, and map out their own paths through the archive for others to follow in their footsteps. Fostering a sense of community, investigation and adventure, the rich heritage preserved in LIFT Living Archive reveals new ways of looking at the future by examining the past.

In 2008, LIFT invited educational and community groups to investigate the archive with us to help develop new understandings about the pleasures, possibilities and challenges of developing public participation and learning projects with archives generally and the LIFT archive specifically. We were keen to know what this participation would reveal about LIFT, about the archive and about creative engagement. The findings are articulated in Dr Caoimhe McAvinchey's report Making an Invitation, the result of a process of collaborative enquiry, dialogue and reflection between all of the participants. You can download the full report below.

Artist and Artistic Director of Forced Entertainment Tim Etchells writes about the LIFT Living Archive in this article for the Guardian: In Praise of LIFT.

Looking at the archive I remember seeing The Wooster Group back in 1986. As an audience member at that time I think I went into a show of theirs called LSD without much clue what was coming – no website to check out, no clips on YouTube. I'd hardly travelled for work, hardly seen anything much theatre-wise from outside the UK. Everything was word of mouth. And encountering the Woosters as part of LIFT didn't so much change everything as offer some kind of final confirmation that a different way of describing the world in theatre was possible and necessary, creating an invitation to think again about the possibilities of the stage and the world itself.