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	HISTORY
	The following articles will be posted in PDF format over the coming months. They are included on this site as examples of attempts to establish collective working practices around art production - where distribution and consumption is set in a community and essentially local context but has, from time to time, achieved international resonance. They may be helpful references for those who similarly wish to establish and develop such practices. See "Latest News" for details of all additions to the site as they take place.
	1. Northeast Films and Cultural Foundation 1974 - 2001 A personal history. 2. Film and Television Workshops in the UK 1964 - 2001 Channel Four TV Co began broadcasting in 1982. As part of its remit it advertised the availability of franchises under the auspices of a ground-breaking industrial agreement "The Workshop Declaration". Around 90 film and TV workshops and production groups from around the country applied for these franchises - 8 were initially awarded. This history describes the developments leading to this potential turning point for the British film and television industry, and its aftermath. 3. Interview with Murray Martin, Amber Films What have been the group's major successes? "I think survival. And carrying on working is the success. Collectives are not supposed to last. And to have lasted thirty years is, I think, the central success".
	Murray Martin remembered the following quote when interviewed at his home near Easington Colliery in County Durham. It is perhaps helpful in reminding us that a purpose of history is to help us learn: "We can perhaps detect one characteristic which art must have, if it is to forgo both entertainment - value and magical value and draw a subject matter from the audience themselves. It must be prophetic. The artist must prophecy not in the sense that he foretells things to come, but in the sense that he tells his audience, at the risk of their displeasure, the secrets of their own hearts. His business as an artist is to speak out, to make a clean breast. But what he has to utter is not, as the individualistic theory of art would have us think, his own secrets. As spokesman for his community, the secrets he must utter are theirs. The reason why they need him is that no community altogether knows its own heart; and by failing in this knowledge a community deceives itself on the one subject concerning which ignorance means death. For the evils which come from that ignorance the poet as prophet suggests no remedy,because he has already given one. The remedy is the poem itself. Art is the community's medicine for the worst disease of the mind, the corruption of consciousness" from "The Principles of Art" by R.G. Collingwood. Oxford University Press (1958)
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