Mass Observation
The Eye
The Archive holds a small number of collections in addition to the Mass Observation papers. These groups of papers have been accepted because they relate closely to both the date and the themes of Mass Observation's work. The collections include over 70 small collections of personal papers from individuals comprising diaries, photographs, scrap books, letters, account books, printed material and ephemera. In general they cover the period after 1930 up to the present day.
Also held are the papers of a project designed to record the Silver Jubilee in 1977, and the 'One Day for Life: Photographic competition' - a collection of 100,000 colour photographs all taken on one day in 1988, the 14 August, by amateur photographers for a competition organised by the cancer research charity, Search '88. The 4,000 prints shortlisted for the competition have been organised into main subject themes (77 boxes). The Archive also holds a collection of children's diaries collected as part of a collaborative project with a local community publisher. The Children's Millennium Diaries collection comprises around 600 diaries from children in the Brighton and Hove area who kept a diary for a week during the year 2000.
- Read about the design of the Mass Observation Eye [University of Sussex website]
Image courtesy of Special Collections at the University of Sussex Library.