British Archive of Contemporary Writing

From 2018-2020, doctoral researcher Emily Walker (University of East Anglia) acted as Curatorial Assistant of the Charlie Higson Archive, a collection of television comedy materials at the British Archive of Contemporary Writing. Within this role, she curated The Fast Show 25th Anniversary Exhibition 2019-2020.

Emily says: “My favourite aspect of my archive placement has undoubtedly been the huge variety of new tasks I have completed, ranging from cataloguing the entire Higson collection online to investigating the preservation of digital scriptwriting and presenting my findings to my peers.

A particular highlight was working with Charlie Higson himself when managing The Fast Show 25th anniversary event in December 2019, [for which I also] curated an accompanying exhibition attended by 300 students, staff, and members of the public. This also led to a (brief) appearance on The Fast Show documentary that aired on GOLD in August 2020.

I have had the chance to really experience the diverse range of roles an archivist inhabits – in fact, when I recently checked the government’s new National Careers Service webpage on archivists I found I had completed every single day-to-day task listed!

This career experience will be absolutely vital whether I stay in academic research or move into archivism … As I come to the end of my placement I am already planning my return!”

Read more about Emily’s experience of archiving in her blog post here.