The Study Room

“Their open-access Study Room provides a gateway into a provocative, challenging yet wonder-full world”
The Independent’s 50 Best Museums and Galleries (October 2010)

The Study Room is the core resource of the Live Art Development Agency and is a free, open access research facility used by artists, students, curators, academics and other arts professionals.

The Study Room is in Bethnal Green (London), and can be used to view artist’s work, read publications, undertake research projects, find out general information about Live Art, opportunities and networks.

The Study Room houses one of the largest publicly accessible libraries of Live Art related videos, DVDs and publications in the UK and for many people the resource is one of the only opportunities to view documentation of performances that they were unable to experience ‘live’.

The Study Room holds:

• A comprehensive collection of publications ranging from theoretical texts to books on individual artists’ work.
• Thousands of DVDs, videos, CDs and digital files of performance documents and documentation.
• A range of British and international magazines, journals and back issues: including: Performance Research, Janus, High Performance, Hybrid, and Virus.
• Various Collections, including The Library of Performing Rights, a unique resource examining the intersection between performance and Human Rights.
• Information on facilities, training, networking, support structures, professional development opportunities, funding and policy for Live Art.

To browse our catalogue see here.

As part of the continuous development of the Study Room we have commissioned a range of artists and commentators to write personal Study Room Guides to help navigate users through this resource.

Feedback from different users of the Agency’s Study Room can be read here.

The Study Room is a reference-only resource, and we are unable to lend any of the materials. Unfortunately we have no photocopying facilities.

Bookings

If you would like to book an appointment to use the research facilities in the Study Room please go to our Eventbrite page and select a slot/slots. The Study Room is usually available Monday to Wednesday and Friday, 11am-5pm. Occasionally this changes due to staff availability, events or exclusive bookings.  clicking this link.

Watching Videotapes

The Live Art Development Agency is engaged in a long-term project to digitize the 759 videotapes held in the Study Room. To avoid possible damage to the videotapes, these are not available for viewing in the Study Room, however some videotapes have now been digitized, and are available to watch on a computer in the Study Room. Please ask/contact us about this. Videotapes are cataloged using “V” at the start of the catalogue/reference number. For example, V0447.