We’re excited to announce a collaborative workshop with Historic England and Arnolfini Arts exploring the contested history of Britain’s collections & public spaces.
Join us on Friday 23 November 9:45-16:30 at the Arnolfini
Interested in attending? Sign up here: eventbrite.co.uk/e/immortalised…
All welcome to attend this free event!
Paul Cooke (University of Leeds) describes his film-education project ‘Using Film to Examine Heritage, Identity and Global Citizenship’: supporting the work of the Bautzen Memorial to Engage New Audiences’
Bautzen Project Trailer from Paul Cooke on Vimeo.
Fondation Royaumont, Val d’Oise, France 16-17 January 2015By Michael Northcott, m.northcott@ed.ac.uk
A Franco-British Research Workshop of grant holders from the AHRC’s Care for the Future grant call and LABEX’s (Laboratory of Excellence) grant call ‘Les passes dans le present: histoire, patrimoine, memoire’ was held at the former Cistercian Abbey of Royaumont 20 miles north of Paris in January 2015. The Abbey was built in the thirteenth century and patronised by Louis XIV. It is situated in a large walled enclosure of gardens, water features and stone buildings. Over the centuries the monks instituted some remarkable hydrological features. Continue reading
The first workshop took place at the Royaumont Foundation near Paris on 16th and 17th January 2015. Please see the programme here.
by Dr Marianna Dudley, University of Bristol. Cross-posted from The Power and the Water: Connecting Pasts with Futures blog
“Fairytale castle”, chateau Chenonceau. Photo: Marianna Dudley.
Chenonceau is a chateau worthy of a fairytale princess. It has turrets and gardens and galleries – and a river running through it. Built between 1514 and 1522 on the site of an old mill, it became the home of Diane de Poitiers, mistress of King Henry II. Diane loved the chateau, and built the bridge over the river. On Henry’s death in 1559, his widow Catherine de Medici demanded that Diane exchange Chenonceau for her chateau Charmont. Catherine built the galleries upon Diane’s bridge, and ruled France as regent from the building. Renaissance intrigues, not fairytales, brought this building to life.
The University of Sheffield’s Researching Community Heritage project was funded by the AHRC Connected Communities programme to support community groups and organisations to develop research projects exploring their local heritage. Academics were matched with community researchers and encouraged to work together to develop co-produced projects. Groups applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund for financial support to develop the project, meaning that they retained autonomy and ownership of the projects and were not reliant on the university for funding. Projects included: working with a homeless charity for young people to research the history of the hostel they are based in; exploring links between the Peak District, India and Hindu culture through research into the cotton trade with Sheffield Hindu Samaj; and a project with Rotherham Youth Service working with Primary School children to find out more about the history of their area through creative approaches to history and archaeology. Continue reading
Prof Andrew Thompson, Leadership Fellow of AHRC Care for the Future: Thinking Forward through the Past. 
Cross-Posted from the Imperial & Global Forum
In 1913, government passed a long forgotten piece of legislation – the Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Act. The title of the act may have been commonplace but the results were certainly not, for it paved the way for the creation of the historic environment we know and enjoy today.
Fast forward a century. In 2013, government is poised to take less, not more responsibility for preserving our historic monuments and buildings. The answer to this retreat is widely felt to lie in the built heritage sector redefining its relationship with the public. But what would that entail?
Imagine a Britain without Stonehenge or Hadrian’s Wall. Imagine our historic landscape no longer embellished by great castles, cathedrals or country houses. This imagined present could easily have been a reality had it not been for the 1913 Ancient Monuments Consolidation and Amendment Act.