From Dean of the MHT Faculty, David Sleight:

“The Executive Board of the university yesterday gave approval for the Media Archive for Central England to relocate to the University campus from July 2011.

This represents the most significant achievement in careful campaigning over the past few years to secure the support of the governing board of MACE, the approval of several funding sources to facilitate the move, the support of industry bodies (such as the BBC Archives), and a University-wide consortium of interested parties…….

In brief the plan is:
– to use the two large seminar rooms on the ground floor of MHT, one for floor-ceiling racking for film (in a temperature – controlled environment), the other to create a suite of rooms for MACE personnel and to create film work-rooms for viewing, digitisation etc.
– James Paterson, Director of MACE will join MHT’s academic staff and will help develop a unique MA programme combined with duties running the archive, and also contributing to the relaunch of the MA in Documentary Production.
– we will secure research bids for collaborative work with MACE (the first bid is already written and ready to be submitted), we know the relationship will reveal significant projects for scholarly and public works that will attract major funding.

The funding secured for the archive move is a package in the order of £0.45m.

I’d like to specifically thank Professor Winston for his lobbying at national level to secure support for the plans, and Dr. Tony Daniels for his indefatigable work negotiating with MACE and drawing up a most significant document to help gain University approval. Sam Williams, Head of Space Planning and Peter Tomlinson, Management Accountant have been constant sources of advice and encouragement. Finally, I’d like to thank the Vice Chancellor who has offered constant encouragement and support throughout the process, representing at this time such faith in the value and importance of the archive and the opportunities it presents. This represents the highest-level support we have for media, arts & humanities activities at this university.”

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