My father, Paul Gerhardt, who has died aged 77, spent many years working in television on educational initiatives, including as head of commissioning at the BBC for its Open University content.
He then became a specialist in how to manage televisual archival material, setting up a consultancy, Archives for Creativity, which advised cultural organisations, broadcasters and artists on how to de-license and re-license archive material to be used by artists, teachers and institutions. He finished his career at the British Film Institute (BFI) as their director of education.
Paul was born in London to Fred Gerhardt, who worked at a Remploy facility, and Freda (nee Canham), a sales representative.
After leaving Bromley grammar school he gained a degree in politics and sociology at Hull University in 1971, and then studied for a PhD in international studies at Oxford University, completed in 1979.
He worked as a tutor organiser at the Workers’ Educational Association until 1982, when he moved to be head of learning channels at the BBC, after which he became deputy director of the International Broadcasting Trust for a five-year period and then producer and network education officer at Thames TV (1987-91).
He was appointed managing editor of BBC Select in 1991 and by 1997 was head of commissioning at the BBC for its Open University content. In that role he led the OU’s transformation from an overnight television broadcast – often presented by men in woolly jumpers – into a modern multimedia educational institution.
In the early 2000s Paul became the BBC’s controller for adult education, then project director of the BBC’s creative archive, an ambitious pilot that looked at opening up the corporation’s century of archived footage for public use.
That project ended inconclusively after two years, but did lead to some material being released for free re-use and re-mixing, and was an important spur for later developments in the field, including the creation of BBC iPlayer. His passion for the opening up of archives came from seeing that in the digital age, knowledge, facts and stories can be distorted, faked or monopolised – or instead be preserved for public use.
In 2007 Paul left the BBC to set up Archives for Creativity, and his final post, from 2013 until retirement in 2019, was as director of education at the BFI. There he was also executive producer of The Stuart Hall Project (2013), a film that brought together many of Paul’s core passions: archived cultural media, progressive leftwing history, and the moving image.
Outside his work he had a love of Shakespeare, Bob Dylan and stone letter carving. He was also a devoted family man.
Paul is survived by his partner of the past 20 years, Patsy Youngstein, two sons, Joe and Dan, from his 1969 marriage to Chloe (nee Gilson), which ended in divorce in 1988, by me, from his second, 1989, marriage, to Sue (nee Aspinall), which ended in divorce in 2004, and by his grandchildren, Lyra and Griffin.
