The Carnegie UK Trust is probably best known for its early investment in libraries and books for libraries. However the Trust has a long history of innovative investment and risk taking. Here we highlight an aspect of such thinking from our archives.
In 1932 – at the height of the depression – the Trust was investing in the Workers’ Educational Association and the British Institute of Adult Education.
Realising that the modern media of the time had huge potential to support people as they sought to continue learning and to broaden their knowledge and horizons, the Trust also supported the Commission on Educational and Cultural Films that published a report: The Film in National Life.
The Commission’s work persuaded the Trustees to embark on a journey to create a National Film Institute, one of the central recommendations of the report, “to perform in the sphere of cinematographic functions analogous to those of the British Broadcasting Corporation”.
