London’s Screen Archives is a network of over 50 organisations with a collective vision – to preserve and share London’s history on film. The network is managed by Film London and we work with our partners to digitise, preserve, and offer access to their moving image collections.
Modernising the Underground
London Underground Video News Release on upgrading the world's oldest metro system.
This Video News Release (VNR) from London Underground offers a peek behind-the-scenes at the construction of regional and national news. VNR's like this one were created by London Underground to give broadcasters the necessary information and video content to create a news item on a particular story or issue. In this case, the VNR is about the then Secretary of State for Transport John Prescott announcing a £365 million investment programme to upgrade the London Underground, as part of the new Labour government's alternative to full privatisation. The video rushes demonstrate the need for modernisation, but also a hopeful look at what could and would be achieved with this investment.
Their future, our now: explore how earlier generations imagined the world we're living in today.
For anyone living in the later years of the 20th century, it felt like the future was arriving unusually fast. As computers, once huge behemoths that filled rooms, began to shrink to desktop size, they quickly spread into every arena of society, spreading out from university labs and industry giants to ordinary offices, schools and into the home. Meanwhile astonishing advances in robotics, genetics, materials, transport and entertainment all offered glimpses of a brave new world. Just trying to keep up with this revolution was dizzying, never mind making sense of it.
What did it all mean? What did the future hold - for our work, our leisure, our health, our food, our relationships? How would technology change us as people? Would it be the kind of future we'd want? Nobody could say for sure, but there were plenty of people willing to speculate. And now that their future is our present, it's fascinating to look back and judge for ourselves how right - or how wrong - they were.
