A unique opportunity to manage, and financially exploit, a photographic archive of national importance.
London Fire Brigade (‘the Brigade’) is seeking a commercial partner to work with them to preserve and exploit the Brigade’s working photographic archive. The Brigade wants its archive to be more easily accessible to the public, and to generate more income by selling and marketing images. To do this, the Brigade wants to enter into a long term arrangement with a suitable partner who will manage and exploit the archive for mutual financial and non-financial benefit.
The archive, dating from the 1880s, contains in excess of 300,000 negatives and prints plus about 100,000 digitised images and provides an almost uninterrupted pictorial history of the London Fire Brigade and firefighting in London. It includes images of major incidents, the evolution of firefighting equipment, firefighting during major historical eras (i.e. World War II), day-to-day life on fire stations, as well as the social side of the Brigade.
The vast majority of the collection has never been made available for public viewing. A small number of the images are currently available on the www.lfbphotos.com website.
Prior to an official tendering process, an informal presentation will be held on 16 November 2010 to enable interested parties to view examples from the archive, hear about the Brigade’s intentions, and ask questions. If you wish to attend please email Terry Jones ([email protected]) by Monday, 15 November 2010.
