 mass-observation was a united kingdom social research organisation founded in 1937. their work ended in the mid-1960s but was revived in 1981. the archive is housed at the university of sussex. mass-observation aimed to record everyday life in britain through a panel of around 500 untrained volunteer observers who either maintained diaries or replied to open-ended questionnaires (known as directives). they also paid investigators to anonymously record people's conversation and behaviour at work, on the street and at various public occasions including public meetings and sporting and religious events. ==genesis==  the creators of the mass-observation project were anthropologist tom harrisson, poet charles madge and filmmaker humphrey jennings. collaborators included the critic william empson, the photographer humphrey spender, the collagist julian trevelyan, the later famous music medium rosemary brown.rosemary brown (spiritualist), look beyond today (1986, bantam press), p. 112 and the painters william coldstream and graham bell. run on a shoestring budget with money from their own pockets and the occasional philanthropic contribution or book advance, the project relied most on its network of volunteer correspondents. harrisson had set up his base in a working-class street in the northern english industrial town of bolton (known in m-o publications as "worktown"), in order with his collaborators to "systematically... record human activity in this industrial town" (madge & harrisson, 1938:7) using a variety of observational methods. meanwhile madge from his london home had started to form a group of fellow-poets, artists and film-makers under the name "mass-observation". the two teams began their collaboration in early 1937. an important early focus was king edward viii's abdication in 1936 to marry divorcÃ©e wallis simpson, and the succession of george vi. dissatisfied with the pronouncements of the newspapers as to the public mood, the project's founders initiated a nationwide effort to document the feelings of the populace about a historical event by collecting anecdotes, overheard comments, and "man-in-the-street" interviews on and around the coronation of king george vi and queen elizabeth on 12 may 1937. their first published report,"may the twelfth: mass-observation day-surveys 1937 by over two hundred observers" was published in book form. the result tended to subvert the government's efforts at image-making. the principal editors were humphrey jennings and charles madg
Anthropology_organizations British_culture Demographics_of_the_United_Kingdom History_of_Bolton_Borough Organizations_established_in_1937 Public_opinion Social_statistics_data University_of_Sussex