An innovator and pioneer in video

Jack Henry Moore was one of the most influential figures to emerge from London’s vibrant counter‑culture of the late 1960s. A filmmaker, activist, and catalyst for creative collaboration, Jack helped shape the experimental art and media scene that came to define an era of radical change. He was a founding member of the legendary London Arts Lab, a cooperative space where artists, anarchists, musicians, and filmmakers converged to test new forms of creative expression. The Arts Lab wasn’t just a venue, it was an idea: art without hierarchy, open to all. Within its walls, Jack fostered a spirit of inclusion and invention that would ripple through the next several decades of independent media.


A still from one of Jack's early experimental videos


Before the Arts Lab, Jack had already made his mark at the underground UFO Club, a short‑lived but world‑changing London venue that became the heart of psychedelic music and performance art. There, he worked alongside cultural pioneers who blended music, film, and light to create immersive multimedia happenings, experiences that would lay the groundwork for modern performance installation. His technical curiosity and instinct for collaboration made him one of the first in the UK to recognise video’s potential as an artistic tool rather than just a broadcast medium.


Jack 'colour-keying' himself in a 1980s video


Jack was involved in LGBTQ+ communities where he lived and worked, collecting recordings and ephemera from the circuit. We have hundreds of Jack's posters (like the ones below) and flyers, kept safely in our archive along with the recordings he made.

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When portable video cameras first became available in the late 1960s, Jack seized the opportunity to chronicle underground culture as it unfolded - on the streets, in studios, at festivals, and in private spaces where new ideas were being born. His lens captured moments both intimate and iconic, including landmarks like John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Alchemical Wedding” at the Royal Albert Hall in 1968. Over the next four decades, he amassed an extraordinary personal archive of more than 2,000 tapes: a living record of creative resistance and experimentation across film, art, music, and politics.

In the 1970s he took his practice abroad, joining international networks of artists and collectives who shared his commitment to open culture. In Amsterdam, Jack helped establish the legendary Melkweg club - a multimedia arts centre that became a home for experimental cinema and performance. The Melkweg embodied his belief in the social power of art: a place where boundaries between audience and artist dissolved, and where film and video became tools for connection rather than consumption.  He was the world's first vlogger, naturally understanding how video was going to change the recorded world as technology changed.


A photo of Jack with his video kit (right) outside the Melkweg, 1970s


Until his death in 2014, Jack Henry Moore remained a restless innovator, dedicated to documenting the stories that mainstream history overlooked. His body of work offers an unfiltered view of the late‑20th‑century avant‑garde - a testament to a life lived in constant dialogue with change.

Today, through the efforts of Dig Media, his vast archive is being digitised and revived for new audiences - ensuring that his legacy of creativity, collaboration, and radical openness continues to inspire the cultural storytellers of tomorrow. We understand the importance of Jack's archive because we would have done the same had we been in his shoes - we have been filming similar grassroots culture in Manchester over the last 30 years.