The quality of the materials held at the Theatre Collection reflects the generosity of our past donors, ranging from individual items to complete personal collections and company archives. All donations are cared for to museum and archive standards and, once catalogued, made available to all users.  

We will happily consider donations of material relating to theatre and live art that are within our collecting remit, detailed in our Collections Development Policy: 2016-2021 (PDF, 499kB).  

Our Collections Development Policy is a comprehensive document, but the main points are:

• We collect material relating to a cross section of theatre-based activities in Britain, predominately: professional British theatre and live art.

• We particularly seek accessions that relate to the practice and process of theatre, and give an insight into creativity and its application.

• We prioritise collecting material that directly or indirectly relates to existing collections that will provide greater insight into these holdings.

• We consider the collecting policies of other organisations collecting in the same or related areas or subject fields, in case a more appropriate home can be found and to avoid unnecessary duplication.

Additional information on donations:

Theatre Programmes: To avoid excessive duplication of material, we are currently not accepting theatre programmes until we have rationalised our current holdings of over 150,000 programmes.

Books: It is not our policy to accept routine donations of books unless they are rare books or of particular importance or relevance to our archival collections.

Journals: Although we have complete runs of some journals, such as Theatre World, we are keen to fill any gaps in our collection, particularly for older titles. Our journals list can be found here.

Digital files: Many collections now contain digital content, and we do accept donations of some digital files. It is complex to preserve digital material, so please see Advice for Digital Deposits (PDF, 183kB)‌ if you are considering donating items with digital content.

Records that fall outside our collecting remit

If your records fall outside our collecting remit, please take a look at the following links or email theatre-collection@bristol.ac.uk so we can provide you with further advice on other repositories:

• Local record offices collect material that has significant historical interest to the geographical area they serve. To find your local record office you can use The National Archives Find An Archive directory

• For advice with managing business archives, please look at Managing Business Archives or for business records at risk due to company administration, liquidation or takeover, please contact the Business Archives Crisis Management Team

• To find other UK theatre collections, please look at list compiled by the Association for Performing Arts Collections (APAC) 

Looking after your own records 

However, if you wish to look after your own records, please have a look at our resources page with information on Caring for your own records.

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