Canterbury Cathedral hosted ‘Questions of Space: A Festival of Ideas’ which took place on 20 & 21 June 2016. This included a series of public talks, walks, sights and sounds. The Festival of Ideas is a partnership between Canterbury Cathedral and the University of Kent.
Below is an eight minute documentary about the project, shot and edited by Stacie Lee Bennett.
As part of the Festival, staff and a PhD student from KSA hosted their own events at the Cathedral:
Richard Watkins
Hot Air
Experiment
The vast spaces of Canterbury Cathedral hold 100 tonnes of air, continually moving and sometimes creating draughts. Using helium balloons to see where the air goes, we aim to find out how to improve air flow.
Carolina Vasilikou
Thermal Delight
Walk & Exhibition
Thermal qualities – warm, cool, humid, airy, radiant, cosy – are an important part of how we experience space. This walk invites you to help measure and test the different sensory qualities across Cathedral spaces and precincts to understand how they make us feel and why.
Gordana Fontana-Giusti
Bird’s Eye View
Exhibition & Talk
We will be delving into the archives to discover Christopher Packe, who in the 1700s climbed Bell Harry Tower to get a “bird’s-eye view” of East Kent and, with the help of his theodolite (an instrument for taking precise measurements) created a new kind of map.
Tim Fox-Godden
Ypres to Canterbury
Exhibition & Talk
This exhibition is about how we commemorate war thought architecture and monuments. A huge panoramic photograph taken at Buffs Road Cemetery in Ypres, France, brings feelings of loss and sacrifice at the Western Front to Canterbury Cathedral Bastian Chapel.