Leeds Children's Theatre Archive

The Leeds Children’s Theatre was formed back in 1935, and the intention has been to make our history and images/photographs available to a wider group by making it available digitally. Content is accessible via our website.

What is Leeds Children’s Theatre?

“The aim of Leeds Children’s Theatre is to produce plays suitable for children, the players to be either children or adults or both, as is necessary for the production”.

This was drawn into the constitution in April 1935 and it remains the aim of Leeds Children’s Theatre today

Why do we have an archive?

It’s a chance to share our memorabilia & memories gained from time spent as members of the longest established children’s theatre group in the UK. Leeds Children’s Theatre Archive Group was originally founded back in May 2000 with the specific purpose of creating an archive of images and other resources for publication. The archive would take advantage of the opportunities that home computing equipment and the internet could offer, allowing us to share all those programmes, posters, press clippings and photographic images that had been gathering dust in our homes for decades.

In 2000 the group made a successful bid for a small lottery grant to enable it to purchase the equipment that would be needed in order to capture and record the history of the community that is Leeds Children’s Theatre, from the Society’s origins in 1935 through to the year 2000 and onwards into the future. We needed to borrow memorabilia from members, past members, friends and family in order to make the archive as complete as possible, and this remains the task.  We are also wanting to interview past members about the history of Leeds Children’s Theatre, and their experiences with the Society.

Since the demise of Commanet (the company that originally provided their archive software to us and many other community groups) we have created our own website for the archive, and are gradually transferring all of the images and information onto the site. It’s taking a long time but we’ll get there, and of course each year we have more material available to us as we continue to produce shows and run our weekly drama workshop.

If you are able to help us, or know someone who was a member of Leeds Children’s Theatre we’d be delighted if you can find a moment to get in touch. What did you gain from your time with Leeds Children’s Theatre? Are you still involved? Are your children or even your grandchildren now following your footsteps – perhaps treading the boards themselves?

Go on, we’d love to hear from you …