Visit the Study Room

Opening Hours

The Study Room is currently closed as we are moving towards a system of booking requests. All the information about our new system will be available here soon. Thank you for your understanding and we are looking forward to seeing you at the space soon!

In advance of your visit we recommend you search the Study Room catalogue and check out our Study Room Guides.

Search the catalogue

Booking a Visit

We have implemented new systems and measures to ensure that our staff, visitors, and everyone who uses our building, remain safe and healthy during the ongoing pandemic. Please ensure you read the information contained in the Booking Form fully before arriving at our building.

We can currently accommodate a maximum of 3 Study Room users at any one time. The Study Room now has designated individual workstations, and you will be asked not to move furniture or sit elsewhere. Please arrive at The Garrett Centre wearing a mask. You will be required to keep your mask on whenever you are moving around the building.

For group visits, please visit this page for more information.

“Their open-access Study Room provides a gateway into a provocative, challenging yet wonder-full world”
The Independent’s 50 Best Museums and Galleries

The Study Room

The Study Room is the core resource of the Live Art Development Agency and is a free, open access research facility used by artists, students, curators, academics and other arts professionals.

The Study Room is situated at LADA in Bethnal Green, London, and can be used to view artists’ work, read publications, undertake research projects, find out general information about Live Art, opportunities and networks.

The Study Room houses one of the largest publicly accessible libraries of Live Art related videos, DVDs and publications in the world and for many people the resource is one of the only opportunities to view documentation of performances that they were unable to experience ‘live’.

Read testimonials from different users of the Agency’s Study Room.

The Study Room is a reference-only resource and we are unable to lend any of the materials. Unfortunately we have no photocopying facilities.

A group of Study Room users look at a table full of books in LADA's Study Room.

What is available in our Study Room

A comprehensive collection of publications ranging from theoretical texts to books on individual artists’ work:

Thousands of DVDs, videos, CDs and digital files of performance documents and documentation.
A range of British and international magazines, journals and back issues: including: Performance Research, Janus, High Performance, Hybrid, and Virus.
Various Collections, including The Library of Performing Rights, a unique resource examining the intersection between performance and Human Rights.
Information on facilities, training, networking, support structures, professional development opportunities, funding and policy for Live Art.

The exterior of LADA's home the Garret Centre in Bethnal Green

LADA's home - The Garrett Centre, Bethnal Green, East London

Study Room Guides

As part of the continuous development of the Study Room we have commissioned a range of artists and commentators to write personal Study Room Guides to help navigate users through this resource. The idea is to enable Study Room users to experience the materials in a new way and highlight materials that they may not have otherwise come across.

Lois Weaver holding up a Study Room Guide and Claire McDonald sitting beside her

Lois Weaver and Claire McDonald at the Study Room Guide Launch

Watching Videotapes

The Live Art Development Agency is engaged in a long-term project to digitise the 759 videotapes held in the Study Room. To avoid possible damage to the videotapes, these are not available for viewing in the Study Room at this point. We plan to digitise the tapes in the future. Please sign up to our newsletter to be kept updated.