Daffodils, field mice, and ferries: BBC's Video Nation as public heritage film

Abstract

In 1991, the British Broadcast Corporation (BBC) launched a series of shorts in between regular news programming. The program, called Video Nation, featured regular Brits telling the camera of various facets of their everyday lived experiences. The ways in which Video Nation interacts with and defies typical boundaries of genre and practice in non-fiction television render it ripe for study as a piece of British heritage film history. First, this thesis reviews the history of Video Nation's inception as a program at the BBC and, secondly, analyzes its relationship to other unscripted television programs and community-based research projects. Third, the paper explores the significance of Video Nation in the broadcasting landscape more fully as a piece of heritage film. Finally, the paper covers accessibility issues within the project as it stands today. Because of the project's unique positionalities and contexts, Video Nation is a program deserving of preservation and improvements to accessibility in order for it to function as a truly public archive.