Special Collections: Common Ground Archive

The Common Ground Archive: An Introduction

Common Ground is an arts and environmental charity, which was founded in 1982 with a mission to link nature with culture and use celebration of the everyday as a starting point for local action. The charity has raised awareness of a variety of environmental issues through its innovative projects, which have involved public participation; the commissioning of new artistic works; the organisation of exhibitions, events and conferences; the launching of new calendar customs; and the publication of books, pamphlets, newsletters, leaflets and postcards. Many of the projects - in particular, 'Parish Maps', the ‘Campaign for Local Distinctiveness’ and 'Apple Day' - have proven to be highly sustainable, continuing long after Common Ground's active involvement in them ceased.

The Common Ground archive comprises a wide range of material created and collected by the charity in the course of its activities between 1982 and 2013, including project planning papers, correspondence, reports, financial papers, research material, press clippings, photographs, promotional material, and publications. The main section of the Common Ground relates to the charity's project work. This section is divided into 15 sub-sections, with each sub-section relating to a different project organised by the charity. This reflects the archive's original order and the way these records were used by the charity. The archive also includes sections relating to Common Ground's financial records and a library of publications and reference material. 

Between 2018 and 2020, a cataloguing project was undertaken at the University of Exeter Special Collections to make this archive more accessible to the public and open it up to new research. The archive has rich potential for interdisciplinary research in a wide range of areas, including environmental studies, geography, literature, visual arts, cultural studies, sociology and business studies.