Interlochen Center for the Arts Videotapes

Fonds

Identifier: ICA_Video

Staff Only

Scope and Contents note

The Interlochen Center for the Arts Videotape collection covers the many activities, performances, ceremonies, and celebrations of the Camp, Academy, and ICA in general.

The Collection contains roughly 600 beta and VHS tapes, spanning the years from 1930 to 2006. It contains a record of the Interlochen Dance Department, Music Department, the World Youth Symphony Orchestra, commencement ceremonies, Les Preludes, visits and performances from prominent artists, and many other subjects.

Dates

1930-2006

Biographical/Historical note

In 1928 Joseph E. Maddy and Thaddeus P. Giddings established the National High School Orchestra Camp with approximately 100 students. Campers from all over America arrived by train for eight weeks of music education and summer camp activities such as swimming, tennis, and archery. It grew rapidly in scope, size, and reputation, becoming the National Music Camp in 1932. Interlochen Arts Academy, the country's first independent fine arts boarding high school, opened in 1962. In 1990 The National Music Camp changed its name to Interlochen Arts Camp. Today the Interlochen Arts Camp has thousands of children who attend the summer sessions of two, four, and eight weeks.

Common abbreviations for the various parts of the Center are ICA (Interlochen Center for the Arts); IAC (Interlochen Arts Camp); IAA (Interlochen Arts Academy).

Extent

25 Cubic Feet

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Arrangement note

The videotapes in this series were processed by Perie Kline, and have been arranged chronologically within three main subseries': Interlochen Arts Camp (IAC), Interlochen Arts Academy (IAA), or Interlochen Center for the Arts (ICA)/General. Within these subseries there are additional subgroups based on subject. This structure was chosen due to the existence of a large number of tapes pertaining to a particular subject or series.

Within IAC there are four subgroups: Collage, Les Preludes, Tales from the Interlochen Woods, and World Youth Symphony Orchestra. In IAA there are four subgroups: Commencement, Dance Department, Music Department, and Theater Department. The Dance Department subgroup contains an additional five subseries: Coppelia Ballet, Nutcracker Ballet, Sleeping Beauty Ballet, Spring Dance Concert, and Winter Dance Concert. In ICA/General there is one subgroup titled Grammy Sessions. All other tapes that do not fall into these subgroups are arranged in chronological order within the three greater subseries.

There is an additional subseries that contains all tapes with no identified date. These tapes are arranged alphabetically and each item is identified with a box number where the tape can be found.

Location note

The collection of video tapes is held in the basement of the McWhorter building on the ICA campus

General Physical Description note

App. 600 items

Processor: Perie Kline

The Interlochen Video Tape collection initially consisted of roughly 900 tapes housed in 42 boxes of various sizes. There was no organization or categorization to the tapes or boxes and the ony source of information regarding the collection was a binder containing a list of what each box contained.

My first step in processing the collection was to create a master list of all video tapes in the collection, with any information attached to them that could be discovered, including title, date, subject, format, and number of copies. Throughout this process I utlized several resources within the Interlochen Archive and online to identify missing information such as dates, names, or titles for much of the collection. As part of this inventory process, I removed all tapes from the boxes and separated them into three categories: tapes with dates, tapes without dates, and tapes that could be deaccessioned. Of the initial ~1000 tapes I identified 200 that were not of particular use or value to the archival collection and so could be deaccessioned. The main reasons for deaccession were multiple copies of a tape, little or no connection to ICA, and tapes that were from TV or other source not affiliated with ICA (assuming ICA had it's own footage of the event or performance in question). This information was also recorded in the master spreadsheet for the collection. Around 130 tapes remained with no identified dates, and these were placed back into six boxes and are housed in a large cabinet next to the arranged and dated collection.

Once the collection had been whittled down to the tapes to be included in the archive, I began to separate them out into three different groups: tapes associated with Interlochen Arts Camp, tapes associated with the Academy, and tapes that either applied to both Camp and Academy or were affiliated with ICA as a whole. Within these three major groups I identified several subseries based on the existence of large numbers of tapes in a particular category or subject. These tapes were then re-housed in metal file cabinets as this was the most economical source of storage available for the collection. Each tape is also housed in it's own individual case, either a paper case or hard plastic container.

The last step in this process was to create the finding aid for the collection as a whole. This was done using Archivists Toolkit, transferring the important identifying information from the master list for each tape. The finding aid is arranged as the physical collection is, chronologically in three main groups and several subgroups, and alphabetically in a fourth group for the tapes with no dates.