HAP24: London Community Video Archive (LCVA)

London Community Video Archive (LCVA) preserves, archives and shares community videos made in the 1970s/80s in London and the South East.
Portable video recording became available for the very first time back in the early 1970s, making it possible for communities to make their own television. The medium was taken up by people ignored or under-represented in the mainstream media - tenants on housing estates, community action groups, women, black and minority ethnic groups, youth, gay and lesbian people, and the disabled. With an overriding commitment to social empowerment and to combating exclusion, 'Community Video' dealt with issues which still have a contemporary resonance - housing, play-space, discrimination, youth arts.
LCVA has been running an outreach and partnership programme of community screenings and events for the last six years, reaching out to current groups working in these areas, who want to learn from the past.