NFSA blog entries by Morgyn Phillips

The NFSA exhibitions team describe the challenges and joys of curating the Collective Passions poster exhibition.

We are putting together a small exhibition of reproductions from the illustrated song slide collection. Illustrated songs are glass magic lantern slides and were around in the first three decades of the 20th century. They featured photographic, painted or drawn images which were projected onto a screen in sequence to create a narrative. The slides accompanied a singer who invited the audience to join in during the chorus. These community singalongs took place in halls, theatres and cinemas and some were regularly broadcast on radio.