The Power to Transform - Scenic Art Oral Histories

This dataset contains oral histories collected from professionals involved in the scenic art profession in Britain. These oral histories were collected as part of The Power To Transform research project.

Content of the dataset:

In particular, the dataset comprises:

1 - Audio files in MP3 format for the oral histories collected from each interviewee.  Note that there are multiple files for some interviewees where the oral history was collected in multiple parts during the course of the interview. These files are named as 'PowerToTransform_<name>_<part>.mp3' where <name> is the interview name and <part> is the part number.

2 - A table in CSV (comma-separated values) format listing the interviewees who provided the oral histories in this dataset - PowerToTransform_Oral_History_Interviewees.csv

3 - A blank template document in PDF for the Recording Agreement used for this research project - PowerToTransform_Recording_Agreement_Template.pdf

4 - A blank template document in PDF for the Interview Summary Sheet used for this research project - PowerToTransform_Interview_Summary_Sheet_Template.pdf

5 - A document in PDF that summarises the Research Themes and Questions used by the interviewer when collecting the oral histories for this research project - PowerToTransform_Oral_History_Themes_Template.pdf

6 - This README document to provide a description of the dataset.

How the dataset was collected:

Each participant was interviewed individually by the same interviewer.   The interviews were semi-structured and covered the topics outlined in the Research Themes and Questions document included in this dataset. The interviews were conducted at either the participant's home or place of work as convenient for the participant.  The interviews were collected over the period February 2018 to September 2018. Audio recordings of each interview were made using a ZOOM H4n Pro voice recorder.

Format of the audio:

The oral histories in this dataset are provided as audio files in MP3 format. These MP3 audio files have been produced from the original audio captured during the project interviews by converting the WAV format files using a constant bit rate of 192kbps. To support ease of use, individual audio files have been amplified as appropriate to produce RMS values in the approximate range -23db to -18dB. Any such amplification is noted in the metadata for the individual audio file.

Using this dataset:

We are grateful to the interviewees who provided the oral histories in this dataset. In order to safeguard these interviewees, please note that this dataset is licensed for use under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC-BY-NC-ND. 

Further information:

This dataset was collected by Professor Christina Young at History of Art, School of Culture and Creative Arts, College of Arts, University of Glasgow.

Acknowledgment:

The Power To Transform research project, including the collection of this oral history dataset,  is supported by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship awarded to Professor Christina Young. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Leverhulme Trust.