Key Collections Series: The Arts

The Mikron Theatre Company Collection is a fascinating archive of a mainly canal based theatre company, who have been performing in pub gardens and village halls across the canal network of the UK for over forty years. It contains records of actors and those involved with the running of the company, everything from scripts to research and development folders for shows, their programmes, backdrops and advertising materials. It also charts the administrative story of keeping a small independent theatre company in business through fundraising and funding bid applications and reports.

Arts. Mikron - Pedal Power Arts. Mikron - Striking the Balance Arts. Mikron - Our Victor

Mikron Theatre Company production posters

We also have a collection of material and objects from the Huddersfield Amateur Operatic Society, now the Huddersfield Musical Theatre Society. Dating from the beginning of the 20^th century, programmes and administrative files tell an official history, but this archive also contains objects, from conductors batons, to dolls used as show props or costume tests.

The repository also contains some excellent nineteenth century collection examples covering the Arts. The Fine Art and Industrial Exhibition was a grand exhibition held to mark the opening of a new Mechanics Institute building, and featured many rooms of material, from grand art old masters, to the latest technology in weaving and chemistry. There are also collections spanning some of the intellectual societies of the town in the nineteenth century, including the Foreign Library Society and the Literary and Scientific Society.

Coming into the 20^th century, we have an interesting book collection of the Left Book Club, containing a range of well-known and lesser known socialist themed literature. The records of the local theatre, the Lawrence Batley, are also lodged with us, and we have a large amount of material also relating to theatre in Huddersfield in the 1920s – 1950s in the Kirklees Theatre Trust collection. These collections reveal a side of human expression and emotion across two centuries expressed by both the professional and amateur sphere of Huddersfield society.