Thanks to the PNRR Grant, we created the Motus Archive.
The archive contains all the material accumulated over these 33 years of theatrical adventures: notes, directing notebooks, audio/video recordings, and countless photographic images captured by us and by many other eyes.
Thanks to the collaboration with professionals in cultural heritage preservation and digital technologies, we had the opportunity to make the historical archive of the Motus theatre company accessible. The archive documents more than thirty years of theatrical productions through videos, audio documents, texts, photographs, and graphic materials, accumulated over time in an unorganized form and already the subject of numerous requests from students and academic institutions, including international ones. To achieve this goal, the project was supervised by an archivist from Biblioteca civica Gambalunga in Rimini in collaboration with the Motus team and with 4Science for the technological aspects related to the creation of the publication and data research environment.
All this material forms both a digital library and a physical archive, which will be preserved partly at the Gambalunga Library and partly at Casa Motus.
The creation of this archive, in addition to making the history of Motus accessible, emphasizes the safeguarding of “historical” materials by ensuring the preservation and long-term durability of digital memories. It also addresses the need for inclusion of people with disabilities in the design or adaptation of the structure, spaces, and digital services, and contributes to an ecological approach through an online management system designed to reduce energy consumption and promote sustainability.
Biblioteca civica Gambalunga, a project partner to which Motus intends to donate its archival collection, is located in Rimini at Via Gambalunga 27. Its origins date back to the bequest of the jurist Alessandro Gambalunga from Rimini, who, upon his death in 1619, left his palace and “library” to the Municipality of Rimini for public use. Today, the Library holds more than 300,000 volumes, including 60,000 antique books, around 1,350 manuscript codices, 6,000 prints, 2,400 periodicals, more than 4,000 DVDs, and approximately one and a half million photographic images on various media. Among the activities of the Gambalunga Library are the expansion of its documentary heritage and its proper preservation and accessibility. The acquisition and enhancement of the Motus Archive by the Gambalunga Library aims to contribute to the understanding of the world of performance through documentary sources that bear witness to the history of contemporary theatre and form part of the history of local and national culture. Mara Sorrentino, representative for the Gambalunga Library, will oversee archival consultancy and the coordination of cataloguing activities.
4Science SPA, another project partner responsible for the technological innovation aspects, is an Italy-based publicly listed company founded in 2015 to support universities, research institutes, and cultural organizations around the world in the management and implementation of digital projects. It is part of the Itway Group, listed on the Italian Stock Exchange since 2001 and active in the IT sector for 25 years. Its areas of activity include institutional and research repositories (with the DSpace-CRIS platform), digital libraries for libraries, museums, archives, and galleries (with DSpace-GLAM), digital curation, and digital preservation. 4Science adheres to methodological and scientific standards recognized by international communities, and its team has worked and continues to work on the definition and dissemination of open standards in collaboration with major communities developing open-source platforms and strategies. The extensive multi-level participation of 4Science staff enables institutions using the team’s services and expertise to discover and propose innovative solutions and future developments for the platform itself.
Project funded by Next Generation EU
