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Seeing Red: Periods and Protest (Exhibition)
This exhibition showcases the creative responses of young people to the history of women’s health and activism in post-war Britain. Visitors will have the opportunity to use historical sources to produce their own protest posters and donation boxes to raise awareness about period poverty in the UK today. Open to all, this showcase will inspire conversations about the relationship between past and present in our individual health experiences, while also championing ways of working together to eradicate period poverty in…
Find out more »‘Highway to Nowhere’? A History of the Tyne Piers
Starting outside Old Low Lights in North Shields join Marine Planner, Kathyrn, for a 2.5 mile walk along the River Tyne to the entrance of the North Tyne Pier, Tynemouth and back exploring the social history of the Tyne Piers. This guided walking tour will discuss the purpose of the Tyne Piers and consider what the River Tyne would be like without them, and what this would have meant for Victorian Tyneside. Kathryn's research has delved into the archives to…
Find out more »How Do You Want to Be Remembered?
In this workshop at Liverpol Central Library, consider the way that people are remembered after their deaths. Together, generate ideas for new ways to design a family tree that pays attention to the identities of the family members rather than the two years which bookend their existence. Thomas Hardy and the concept of posthumous (after death) identity will help us to discuss which aspects of identity are most important to us. Having read Hardy’s famous poem 'Afterwards' (in which he conjectures…
Find out more »Walking the Exeter Dead
Join in this hour and a half's walk through the centre of Exeter, exploring the history of the city through stories of deaths, diseases, and disasters. Meet at Exeter Central Library and then visit a number of locations around the city centre, discovering tales of witchcraft, skulduggery in the Cathedral Close, a fatal duel, and a saint who carried off her own severed head. Researchers from the departments of English and History at the University of Exeter will share their…
Find out more »Music and Migration
This workshop will explore the origins of some of the music we hear today by looking at the journey music makes with its people when they migrate. Working with Syrian darbuka virtuoso Rami Merhi and songwriter and musician Anna Neale from the University of Kent, 'Music and Migration' will aim to recreate this journey exploring different Arabic and Western rhythms, creating a new fusion in musical composition in a relaxed setting. Everyone will be given a djembe to use, but…
Find out more »Wird Hunt!
According to the last national census, around 1.5 million people in Scotland can speak Scots. The Dictionar o the Scots Leid is the definitive record of their vocabulary. 'Wird Hunt!' will illuminate the Dictionar's history as well as that of the language itself. Learn how the Dictionar's makers keep track of the language in their day-to-day work and discover how their vast collection of quotations richly illustrate a centuries-long tradition of writing in Scots. Want to help make the Dictionar…
Find out more »Landfill and Lichens
Join in this guided walk at Lamplighter's Marsh, led by naturalist and author Ed Drewitt, acclaimed nature writer Tim Dee (Landfill), and community experts on local history. Explore the resurgence of nature in this unique post-industrial landscape. Lamplighter’s Marsh lies next to the tidal River Avon in Shirehampton, near the M5 bridge at Avonmouth. It forms part of an important wildlife corridor, as well as providing a habitat for nationally-rare moss and lichen species. Ed and Tim will be helping…
Find out more »A Ticket to Ride
Emigration to the Americas was a very harsh reality for many poor, unskilled people in Spain in the 1900s. This zarzuela (Spanish operetta) is a one-act piece written in 1905 which follows migrants from Andalusia, Galicia, the Basque Country and La Mancha in the centre of Spain as they travel across the Atlantic to Cuba in search of a better life. Zarzuela is almost never performed outside Spanish-speaking countries yet this one-act form, with its mixture of orchestrated folk-song and…
Find out more »Feral Futures
Come along to this exhibition showcasing the finds of ten brave child explorers who investigated, mapped and recorded Burslem Port - a local area of disused, wild industrial space. Through play, discussion and experiment, the intrepid leaders have found clues about how this space once emerged and came to an end, which non-human friends are using it now and what sort of future it might yet have. Like all good researchers, they have noted down evidence in journals, digital images, and…
Find out more »Embodied Sounds (Interactive Exhibition)
Come and explore the unusual connections between musical instruments and the body through an interactive exhibition. This includes music that changes as you sing while you eat the score, pieces limited to a single breath, music performed while undertaking unusual activities or extreme exercise, music made from ruined instruments and music that explores the way people interact as they perform. This event is run in association with the Royal Northern College of Music’s Experimental & Exploratory Music Research Centre and includes…
Find out more »Embodied Sounds (Live Performance)
This short concert showcases research that explores unusual connections between musical instruments and the body. This will include music that changes as you sing while you eat the score; flute pieces limited to a single breath; music performed while undertaking (and transformed by) unusual activities or extreme exercise; music made from ruined instruments; and music that explores the way people interact as they perform. This event is run in association with the Royal Northern College of Music’s Experimental & Exploratory…
Find out more »Lines and Ladders
Lines and Ladders is…a game of family histories, a chance to share stories, a family history board game that takes place at a table in a café! This free event is part of a PhD research project investigating the sharing of personal stories in public spaces. During the game, researcher Kirsty Surgey, will be sharing some stories about her adventures in family history and you will be given opportunities to share your own stories. This is a micro-audience performance; you…
Find out more »Once Upon a Time, The End
Join Swansea University’s Dr Alan Bilton and Dr Anne Lauppe-Dunbar for a fun, hands-on, family-friendly creative writing workshop! Explore the nuts and bolts of storytelling, icluding how to open up a story and how to close it. Exercises will guide children (aged 8-12) through a quest-adventure, looking at the shape of stories, how to open a door onto a new world, and how to dramatically draw the curtain. These sessions will run between 1:30pm and 2:30pm and 4:30pm and 5:30pm. Suitable…
Find out more »Let Down
'Let Down' interweaves movement, real life accounts and an original soundscape to give voice to women's experiences of nourishing tiny humans. Northern Ireland has the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world, and breastfeeding successes and failures can be difficult to talk about. Building on interview material and online forum discussions of both breastfeeding and non-breastfeeding women, 'Let Down' explores questions of the quantified self, failure, and online 'sharing' in the context of infant feeding. The performance is part of a…
Find out more »Once Upon a Time, Deep in the Forest
Come along to an afternoon or evening of folktales and magic as Arthur Ransome’s Old Peter’s Russian Tales is brought to life on stage! Meet Old Peter and listen to stories about Baba Yaga, the witch with iron teeth, the little daughter of the snow and a ship that flies. A one-hour performance for the whole family that will warm you up on a cold November day. Also on offer will be a range of fun-filled activities including a scribble…
Find out more »‘The Long Take’: Origins and Endings in Film Noir
At the University of Reading, The Heritage & Creativity Institute for Collections is teaming up with Reading Film Theatre for a ‘Film Noir’ poetry reading, film showing, and pop-up exhibition. We welcome acclaimed poet Robin Robertson to reflect on his use of noir style in The Long Take (2018), winner of the Roehampton Prize and on the Man Booker Prize longlist. He is joined in conversation with John Gibbs, Professor of Film, and Steven Matthews, Professor of English Literature. Doors…
Find out more »A Night at the Great North Museum
Are we driving our planet to destruction? Are human beings the most important drivers of environmental change? Those who say ‘yes’ call our epoch the Anthropocene: an age in which human actions are the most important factor in the Earth’s development. But when did the Anthropocene begin? What brought it into being? And how does it change how we think about our own lives? Explore the idea of the Anthropocene and environmental change during a night at the Great North…
Find out more »Imperfect Orchestra present ‘Metamorphosis’
Imperfect Orchestra presents Metamorphosis, a short film exploring transformations through experimentation and abstraction in this contemporary re-imagining of Franz Kafka's 1915 novella. Imperfect Orchestra's first foray into self-production of moving image uses the prism of 21st-century life and its many distortions to explore our cultural and societal values. Continuing the use of live soundtrack, but with the inclusion of experimental live sound design, the film considers how these very values have transformed over time, and how they exert an almost…
Find out more »Turkish Exorcist
Did you know that a Turkish remake of The Exorcist was made in 1974 that closely recreated the William Friedkin original albeit with the Catholicism replaced with Islam? For many years the film Şeytan circulated only in poor-quality bootleg copies, but it has recently been digitally restored and this screening will be the first time the HD restoration has been screened with English subtitles. The screening will be followed with a panel discussion on the topic of film remakes and…
Find out more »Songs from the Dam
Explore stories, tunes and folk songs of the North East in this special event with Kathryn Tickell, David Almond and Amy Thatcher. David Almond’s new book The Dam, beautifully illustrated by Levi Pinfold, tells the story of the flooding of Kielder Water. After the valley was abandoned and before the waters rushed in, Kathryn and her father Mike Tickell visited the empty farms and homesteads, playing the songs of Northumbria there for one final time. These artists’ work grows from…
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