Living Newspaper Unit

Meet the Living Newspaper Unit and gain an insight into research undertaken by artist and creative fellow Hilary Powell in our Newsroom, exploring histories of power and energy through the microfilm newspaper collection.

This performative event marks the culmination of Hilary's creative fellowship at the Library. During her fellowship Powell has delved into the history of the 1930s Federal Theatre Project, an initiative established by the United States government to support the employment of theatre workers in the wake of the Great Depression. Powell focused particularly on the Living Newspaper Unit within the project, a radical practice where current events were developed into productions bringing urgent social issues of the day to a popular audience, though many were censored and never performed publicly.

Drawing on this methodology, Powell has set up her own Living Newspaper Unit, with members recruited from the British Library's Youth Collective and readers in the Newsroom. In her performance Powell invites us to consider, what might a Living Newspaper look like in our time and place? How can its making be performed? And what power does the archive hold to illuminate the present and to shape contemporary debate and action?