What is Ghost Town?

Cities are haunted places: they are haunted by the ghosts of people, buildings, businesses, ideas, of things which once stood and now no longer remain. These traces of the haunted city might be slowly lost to the passing of time, but the city is also vividly recalled in another haunted place: the television archive.

Ghost Town traces how Coventry’s history persists as ghostly traces in the television archive: glimpses of people, places, stories, and snapshots that have been captured and preserved. Through a number of civic screenings (or hauntings) in venues all around the city, Ghost Town unleashes the city’s ghosts and brings past, present, and future Coventry into dialogue. The project has been running since the beginning of 2018 and throughout Coventry's year as City of Culture.

The project has been enabled by collaboration with: the BBC; the BFI; Coventry Cathedral; Coventry Libraries; the Coventry Society; Coventry TUC; FWT (Foleshill Women's Training); Herbert Art Gallery and Museum; Illuminations; ITV; Kaleidoscope; the Media Archive for Central England (principal partner); Photo Miners; Studio Canal; Warwick Arts Centre.