Category Archives: UK Philanthropy Archive

Special Collections and Archives highlights: 2024 edition

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Karen Brayshaw, Special Collections and Archives Manager 

As 2024 draws to a close it is my great pleasure to look back on another busy and exciting year of activity in the University’s Special Collections and Archives. The only change to our Team this year is that we said goodbye our project archivist Daniella in the summer. Daniella worked with us on two funded projects, the David Drummond Pantomime Collection and the collection from the Craigmyle Fundraising Consultants.  The project included sorting, listing, repackaging, and making the two collections accessible and discoverable. You may have seen what she got up to on our social media channels. We wish Daniella well in her new venture. 

Daniella with some Aladdin material from the David Drummond Pantomime Collection.

The whole team have been amazing colleagues throughout the year – especially when I had to step back from work for a few months in order to recover from a health issue – I am very lucky to work with such an awesome team!  Although I’ve missed seeing the work that has taken place in the last three months, I have been able to follow the exciting events through colleagues and social media. One of the many highlights of the year for me was the amazing exhibition celebrating Kent’s rich mining history.  It was a great example of collaborative working with our volunteers and in this case we owe many thanks to Amy. It proved to be a popular attraction, and we had many visitors to the gallery, including external groups. As well as overseeing and co-curating our wonderful exhibitions, Beth has been busy working with the philanthropic community to grow the UK Philanthropy Archive and raising the funds to enable us to catalogue them. I’m looking forward to 2025 when much of this work will take place and the records will be added to our catalogue. Beth also has a loyal group of volunteers who come in regularly to work on the University archive, which will be super helpful next year as we approach the University’s 60th anniversary. Beth has also worked to deliver new and innovative sessions for external groups, and it was a joy to see the pantomime collection being utilised to stimulate the students from Canterbury College exploring ideas for their projects.  

Clair has had an amazing year, working to get more of our collections listed, repackaged, and added to the online catalogue for all to see. A significant amount of this has been made possible through the excellent work Clair does with student work placements and volunteers.  I was especially pleased to see the Holt’s Bairnsfather collection being listed and repackaged – you can read more about it below. Clair has also been busy this year overseeing loans of collection items for external exhibitions, which is another way of sharing our amazing collections with wider audiences.   

Christine has also been busy devising new sessions and introducing new material to the seminar groups, exposing the academics and students to the richness of our collections. In 2023 we were pleased to receive the Louis James collection and Christine has done an amazing job of cataloguing the whole lot! The collection is already proving its value in enriching our teaching offer and Christine is being a brilliant advocate for it. It’s also very satisfying to witness the great work Christine and her volunteers are doing with our theatre programme collection.   

Items from the Louis James Collection

Alex is keeping the Phase One rig busy and producing amazing images from the cartoon and theatre collections. This enables greater access as well as supporting the preservation of the collections. Mandy continues to beaver away making sure our cuttings collection is kept up to date. At the same time, she has been digitising some original art works and sheet music. Sam has been working on digitising and cataloguing collections in the British Cartoon Archive, specifically Lawrie Siggs and Donald Rooum Collections. You can now find the records for Lawrie Siggs on our catalogue. Jacqueline completed cataloguing the Arnold Rood collection, Jack Reading and Colin Rayner’s collection, Charles Lewen’s collection, and books from the David Drummond Pantomime collection. It’s always a joy to see what treasures she brings back from the basement!

Our colleagues from the Curation and Discovery team, Stu, Matthias and Emma have been working with us one day per week and continue to make big strides in dealing with our British Cartoon Library backlog as well as our digital cartoon collection and various book collections, making them available to everyone.   

I never cease to be amazed and humbled by the talented people that come to support us in our work. Our volunteer projects this year have yet again been hugely successful – many thanks to everyone who has helped us in 2024! – and we look forward to working with our current and new teams of volunteers in 2025. 

If you are on campus do drop by the Templeman Gallery, Block A|1. The team are currently installing a wonderful exhibition about pantomime (Oh yes they are!) which I promise will not disappoint you.  The new listening station has some lovely content on it. And do keep an eye on our social media channels for updates on our associated events.  

Sneak preview of our upcoming pantomime exhibition ‘Magnificent! Spectacular!’

Clair (Digital Archivist) 

Once again, the year has gone by super-fast and I feel as if I can only just recall all the amazing things the team has achieved this year, but there are a few stand outs for me.  

Firstly, we are so lucky to have worked with some amazing volunteers and placement students this year.I supervised a group of three students – Lizzie, Harvey and Nirvanna – who worked on packaging and preserving some ceramic objects in the British Cartoon Archive. You can read a blog post about this work here. I’ve also had the pleasure of working with our lovely volunteers, one of whom, Grahame, not only donated a collection of theatre programmes to us last February but also committed to listing them all for us! He’s now finished that work but continues to volunteer with us, working now on our Max Tyler collection. 

Completed packaging of Holt Bairnsfather Collection objects.

 

We’ve received some fabulous material for the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive this year which I’ve had the pleasure of sorting, accessioning and cataloguing, including three fan collections (Laura Grimshaw’s Teenage Obsessions, Richard Gill’s ‘A Rich Comic Life’ Collection, and the Joseph Champniss Collection), the Lakin McCarthy Entertainment Ltd Collection, and a collection of material from Stewart Lee.

Our loan service has been busy again this year, with British Cartoon Archive material going out to the Herne Bay Cartoon Festival and Imperial War Museum, and a continuing loan of a Nick Garland cartoon to the V&A that is part of an international touring exhibition.

Image of the V&A exhibition ’Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser’ installed at the V&A Musuem in South Kensington.

The poster for the ‘Churchill in Cartoons’ exhibtion outside the doors of the IWM.

It’s such a pleasure that we’re able to share our collections to the wider public in this way and I really enjoy being able to make connections with institutions in Britain and abroad through supporting their exhibitions.The exhibition at the IWM (Churchill in Cartoons: Satirising a Statesman) opens from 29 November 2024 to 23 February 2025, so do check this out if you can. We were very lucky to be invited to the Private View of the exhibition, which we very much enjoyed. It’s a fabulous look at Churchill’s political career through satirical cartoons. And I’m delighted to say we already have two exciting loan requests in process for next year, so things aren’t slowing down!

 

Lastly, I was thrilled to organise a Halloween event with my colleagues Beth and Christine this year. Called ‘Ghost Stories’, it was a behind-the-scenes tour of our archival stores with a difference! Attendees were titillated with (battery-powered) candle-lit readings of classic ghost stories. The event was very well received, and we hope to do another event next Halloween, albeit with a new spooOoOOooky theme.

An image of a spectre in our stores, lit only by emergency lights and (battery) tea lights

Beth Astridge (University Archivist)

Exhibitions in the Templeman Gallery

We run a regular programme of exhibitions in the Templeman Gallery and our ‘Mining in Kent’ exhibition was a particular highlight! Using a range of our archive material this exhibition told the story of the history of mining in Kent, from the early days of discovering the Kent coalfield to the impact of the 1984 Miners’ Strike. We were able to showcase material from several collections including the Richard Richardson Mining Collection, the British Cartoon Archive, the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive, and the Labour and Socialist Newspapers. We held several tours of the exhibition as well as a launch event and have been really pleased with the local interest and feedback about exhibition and our events. We are particularly grateful to one of our volunteers, Amy Green, who assisted with research, writing panels and captions, and installing the exhibition.

We also curated a virtual version of this exhibition which you can view on our exhibitions page.

Image of Coal Not Dole leaflet from the Richard Richardson Mining Collection

Another exhibitions highlight this year has been our collaboration with the Brook Rural Museum on an oral history project relating to memories of hopping and hop production in the Brook and Wye area of Kent. This resulted in an exhibition in our Gallery space featuring recordings of the oral history interviews alongside material that described the history and future of hop production in Kent. This exhibition will be on show again in 2025 at the Brook Rural Museum, so make sure you plan a visit!

Page on Picking Hops from Ann and Jane Taylor, Rural Scenes or a peep into the country: For children (1840), a book in our Children’s Literature collection (S 519.T23 TAY CLC

Listening Station

Our Listening Station in action during the exhibition, Local Stories: Memories of Hopping around Brook and Wye, Kent

The oral history exhibition gave us the opportunity to show off our new listening station in the Templeman Gallery. This is a new audio-visual unit that allows us to upload video and audio material for viewers to listen to/watch in the exhibition space. It is hearing aid enabled and has two listening speakers – so please watch out for future opportunities to discover more of our video and audio collections – including material for our next exhibition on the David Drummond Pantomime Collection.

Philanthropy and Fundraising

Page from early records of the National Benevolent Fund showing some of the early donors/subscribers, National Benevolent Fund Archive

The UK Philanthropy Archive continues to thrive and a highlight this year was receiving some important new collections. In July we received the collection of the National Benevolent Fund – a charity established in 1812 which used a subscription model to support ‘distressed gentlewomen’ with pensions and annuities and later supported those experiencing poverty. The collection had been identified as a collection at risk by The National Archives and we were pleased to play a part in saving this fascinating collection and giving it a home.

In September we were delighted to receive the archive collection of the John Ellerman Foundation along with a grant to enable the repackaging and cataloguing of this important collection of a foundation established by Sir John Ellerman, once Britain’s richest man, and the family behind the Ellerman Lines and Wilson Lines shipping business. Look out for more about this in 2025 when we start the cataloguing process.

And finally, also in September, we received the Jack Petchey Foundation archive. Sir Jack Petchey was a businessman and philanthropist who started a taxi business, a second-hand car business and later a property business, generating the wealth that he dedicated to charitable work and philanthropy focussed on young people through his Foundation. The full catalogue for this collection will appear on our website soon.

This year we have also made great strides towards cataloguing the Craigmyle Fundraising Consultants collection – a project that will be completed in 2025! The partial catalogue is available now to view on our website.

University Archive

In the University Archive we are gearing up to the University’s 60th anniversary celebrations later in 2025. One aspect of this will focus on music and live music performances on campus, and I have enjoying communicating with alumni who have memories and sometimes photo evidence of fantastic bands and gigs they attended. Volunteers Peter Stanfield and more recently David Blair have been doing an amazing job researching and logging the gigs and bands who played at the University since we opened in 1965. We are looking forward to making this complete list available for researchers and former students highlighting what it was like to work, study and enjoy live music on campus throughout its history!

Cataloguing the David Drummond Pantomime Collection

The Archives Revealed funded cataloguing project was almost(!) finished this year by our brilliant Project Archivist Daniella Gonzalez.

Students from EKC Canterbury College studying the David Drummond Pantomime Collection – image courtesy of Amanda Sefton-Hogg, Canterbury Festival.

We are using Daniella’s work to inform the final exhibition of the year – Magnificent! Spectacular! – which will showcase this fantastic collection and tell the story of the history of pantomime from the early days of the Commedia dell’Arte to the modern extravaganza we know today!

A panto project highlight was working in collaboration with the Canterbury Festival and  EKC Canterbury College to bring more than 100 students onto campus to use the David Drummond Pantomime Collection as inspiration for coursework across subjects such as fine art, textiles, graphics, and photography. You will be able to see a couple of the students creations in our exhibition, and we were super pleased that this highlight was featured in The National Archives publication, A Year in Archives.

Christine Davies (Special Collections and Archives Coordinator)

I had the great pleasure this year of cataloguing the collection of literature gifted to us by a former professor of Victorian and modern literature at Kent, Louis James. The Louis James Collection primarily comprises literature of the Caribbean and African diasporas, but there are also important theoretical and historical works on race, colonialism and slavery too. Many of us have heard of Olaudah Equiano, the famous abolitionist, but Mary Prince is less well known – born into slavery in Bermuda, her dictated memoirs were published in London in 1831 and reprinted twice in the same year. Further highlights in the collection, for me, include an unpublished typescript of Derek Walcott’s play Franklin; diverse artisanal, cloth-bound books published by the Writers Workshop (a small printing press established in Calcutta); the plethora of Caribbean poetry which details the migrant experience in Britain with irony, sometimes anger, always charisma, and which – on the page and in performance – was completely innovative. Kamau Brathwaite created the ‘Sycorax video style’ by combining customized typefaces with irregular page layouts; others’ are marked by their rhythmic similarity to reggae (dub) and/or their fusion of dialects. Amongst the African literature, there are works that reflect on Apartheid, delve into Anasi lore, and diverse anthologies that celebrate the continent’s diversity (from works of magical realism to social justice, from Nobel prize winners to Onitsha market literature); one of the most powerful works, for me, is Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Devil on the cross, the manuscript of which was written in secret, from gaol, on toilet paper. The collection amounts to more than 1000 items and is fully accessible on Library Search.

Examples of Writers Workshop publications in the Louis James Collection, as displayed for our South Asian History Month Archives tour

I’ve also had good fun this year devising new material and seminars for Kent’s School of English, which gives students the opportunity to handle rare books and consider the intricate cultural and socio-political contexts of their period of study. The explosion of print in the eighteenth century gave rise to numerous newspapers and periodicals, the latter typically published monthly. These new arenas of print were not only used to disseminate information but also direct public taste and opinion and even shape literary developments. Fiction could be serialised in these monthly publications and biographies and gossip columns fuelled an emerging celebrity culture, giving voice to more obscure figures since forgotten – how many of you have heard of the blind poet and early disability advocate, Thomas Blacklock (1721-1791)? Did you know that The Lady’s Magazine (1770-1847) provided inspiration for both Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters?

Volunteer Amelia Bocskei working on photographs found in Terry O’Brien’s programme collection

As Beth and Clair have both mentioned, we couldn’t do all we do without the invaluable support of our volunteers, and this year has marked a significant leap forward in the management of our theatre programme collections.

Through the collected efforts of Ladaya Berrier, Amelia Bocskei, Stefana Ivanova, Rhea Nurice Lempert and Jessica Mulroy, thousands of programmes have been organised, re-packaged, and listed on spreadsheets, and this will be used to create and enrich catalogue records next year. This work has already enabled us to consolidate our existing holdings of theatre programmes and refine our collecting priorities; it has also enhanced our engagement work by filling gaps in performance history. Our volunteers have also found the experience greatly beneficial, stating how much a privilege it has been “to preserve a voice from the past” and “interact with original historical documents.”

Alex Triggs (Digitisation Administrator)

The high-resolution digitisation of the British Cartoon Archive collections continued throughout 2024 utilising the Phase One photographic rig. This year the focus has been on the original cartoon artwork of Mac (Stanley McMurtry), cartoonist with the Daily Mail. Mac’s career with the Daily Mail began in 1971 and lasted for almost five decades. As a result, this collection contains circa 5000 items of which approximately 80% have been digitised during the year. In addition, a selection of playbills from the David Drummond Pantomime Collection have also been digitised over the past 12 months. Many of these date back to the 1850s and require careful handling as they are extremely delicate.

Left: Our ‘digital kitchen’; Right: a playbill from the David Drummond Pantomime Collection.

On the audio-visual side, I have continued the digitisation the University of Kent Archive collection of vulnerable analogue magnetic audio cassette tape recordings. Moving forward, I am now beginning to address the significant number of at-risk VHS video cassette recordings contained within a several of the Special Collections, perhaps most significantly the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive.

Mandy (Special Collections & Archives Assistant)

I always enjoy scanning our Carl Giles collection every year for the Giles Annual, they are always fun. I have scanned 6,000 cartoons in our Hector Breeze collection, which is so interesting to do. I’m now working on another cartoon collection – the Alan Ralph Collection – which is now being digitised. The song sheets in the Max Tyler Music Hall Collection have also been so lovely to scan as some of them are so vintage and very delicate. Overall, it has been a busy and interesting time for 2024!

Hector Breeze cartoon (HB0012)

Jacqueline Spencer (Project Curation and Discovery Administrator)

I began the year cataloguing Arnold Rood’s collection of books on theatre. He collected widely around a strong nucleus of works by and about the extraordinary theatre designer (and son of Ellen Terry) Edward Gordon Craig. Next, I catalogued the extensive set of 20th century theatre periodicals in the Reading Rayner collection, then I added books from David Drummond Pantomime Collection to the library catalogue supporting the project to catalogue his archive. He collected books related to pantomime including both scholarly works on the origins of the genre such as ‘The reminiscences of Thomas Dibdin at the Theatres Royal, Drury Lane ..’ of 1824, and some lovely, illustrated children’s books such as ‘Naughty Cinderella’ from 1936.  Charles Lewsen’s books on theatre arts enhance our collection scope in this area, his collection contains more 19th century material. This delicate personification of ‘La Comedie’ with mask and barely visible sprites over her shoulders is the frontispiece from his copy of ‘Masques et bouffons (Comedie Italienne) with text and drawings by Maurice Sand, Paris 1862.

‘La Comedie’, Masques et bouffons (Comedie Italienne) with text and drawings by Maurice Sand, Paris 1862

The Holt Bairnsfather books came next, with a bottom-up view from the trenches of the 1914-18 World War. As this year ends, I have started cataloguing the Muggeridge Book Collection. Focusing on windmills in the U.K. and the Netherlands, William Burrell Muggeridge and Donald Muggeridge were also interested in industrial archaeology and country life and work and sought out locally published pamphlets which can be hard to find as well as substantial scholarly works on mills. Their books are now to be found in our ‘Wind and Watermills Collection’.

Matthias Werner (Curation and Discovery Administrator)

This year I have been focused on cataloguing books and cartoons for the British Cartoon Archive (BCA). I’ve catalogued the remaining books from the Eric Linfield Collection. I am currently working on the John Jensen Collection. John Jensen passed away in 2018, and the Special Collections Team has collaborated with his widow, Pat, and sons, Hal and Sean, to incorporate material from his estate into the existing collection at Kent. The books that have been passed on to us are from various eras and countries and primarily focus on caricature, cartoons, and comics.

Das grosse Trier-Buch, Walter Trier (1972)

My personal highlight, however, has been working on a book from our general BCA collection: Cataloguing a book on Walter Trier, a renowned German artist and illustrator, best known for his work on Erich Kästner’s children’s books. Seeing illustrations like the one below brought back some fond memories from my own childhood.

Additionally, I continue to catalogue Steve Bell’s cartoons for the BCA catalogue. Steve has been sending us his works published in The Guardian, ensuring they are preserved in the national cartoon archive. Looking through pieces like the one below takes me back to the surreal and bewildering times of the COVID pandemic.

[No caption], Steve Bell, 04 Mar 2020 (4470-040320 CONVID19)

Emma Solway (Curation and Discovery Administrator)

Ella Baron- Political Cartoonist

The British Cartoon Archive, housed in Special Collections and Archives, is a unique and ever-expanding collection. I have recently started cataloguing cartoons published in the summer of 2024, from a range of newspapers and cartoonists. This is challenging as each artists’ signature caricatures, styles and motifs must be learned and recognised over time. In addition, describing the events satirised within each cartoon involves developing a good knowledge of current domestic and world politics and the significant public figures of the day.  This is an interesting and stimulating part of my job, even more so when a cartoonist new to you grabs your attention.

[No caption], Ella Baron, 05 Jul 2024 (115193)

It is still quite rare to see political editorial cartoons drawn by women in my work, so she interested me immediately. The “boys’ club” is a common complaint of women working as cartoonists. As most editorial cartoonists stay in their jobs for life and are historically all men, this leaves women with little opportunity. However, it was great to see Ella’s biography, as she is having a flourishing career working regularly for the Times and the Guardian amongst others, after winning the British Cartoon Associations Young Cartoonist of the Year in 2017. As she once commented she enjoyed making a living from drawing Trump all day, I’ve included one of her cartoons featuring him from the Times in August this year. To learn more about Ella visit Ella Baron Cartoons.

Special Collections and Archives highlights: 2023 edition

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2023 has been a year of challenges and delights, we’ve amassed new collections, colleagues and knowledge, and – as is tradition – we want to use this post to share some of our highlights with you.

Karen (Special Collections and Archives Manager)

2023 has been another exciting, as well as challenging, year in Special Collections and Archives. We’ve seen a number of changes in our team. In the summer we said goodbye to two members of our team, Rachel who worked with us as a part-time project archivist for the UK Philanthropy Archive and Matt who was our Digital Lead. While in May we welcomed Daniella to the role of Project Archivist – Daniella’s post is externally funded and she is working to make two of our collections accessible and discoverable. If you follow us on our social media channels you’ll already know something of what she gets up to but there is more in her section below. In July we also welcomed Sam to the team. Sam is working on the Laurie Siggs Archive, purchased earlier this year with support from the Arts Council England/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and Friends of National Libraries. The collection includes, original artworks, rough sketches and sketchbooks as well as notebooks and correspondence. 

Beth has had an amazingly busy year; working with me on funding applications, completing a survey of artworks around campus as well as all the things she mentions in her piece. One of the highlights for me was the amazing exhibition commemorating 100 years since the publication of T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland.  It was a great example of collaborative working with our academic colleagues. It proved to be a great attraction and we had many visitors to the gallery. Beth and I were delighted when Faustin Charles contacted us about his archive. Beth shares more about Faustin below but what you may not know is that he is the author of The Selfish Crocodile – a fantastic book for children. Clair has had great fun working on some of our collections and I know she especially enjoyed working on the Mark Thomas collection. Thanks to her excellent efforts you can now enjoy it too through our online catalogue or by visiting our collections. 

Exhibition poster for 100 Years: TS Eliot’s The Waste Land.

Christine has gone from strength to strength in developing her skills and talents as our Coordinator. She has finished cataloguing her first book collection, of which you can learn more about below and the Childrens Book Collection has so many lovely books for us all to enjoy. Christine also helped to develop the sessions for Discovery Planet in Ramsgate, working with our academic colleague Stella, and our whole team. I hope we can do more to these amazing sessions in the coming year. Mandy continues to beaver away making sure our cuttings collection is kept up to date. At the same time she has been working on digitising the original art works of Hector Breeze. Hector’s cartoons were published in Private Eye, Punch, Evening Standard, and other popular Daily newspapers. Jacqueline completed cataloguing the Carl Giles books, and moved on to catalogue Arnold Rood’s collection (he had a very attractive bookplate) and Jack Reading and Colin Rayner’s collection. Jacqueline has uncovered some real treasures, which I’ve enjoyed seeing. We’re looking forward to seeing what she uncovers next year! Our colleagues Stu and Matthias have been working with us one day per week and have made great progress in dealing with our British Cartoon Library backlog as well as our Shirley Toulson Poetry Collection, making them available to everyone.  

Display of Special Collections and Archives materials at Discovery Planet, Ramsgate.

Our volunteer projects this year have been hugely successful, and we continue to be amazed by the talented people that come to support us in our work.  

Looking forwards to 2024, we have some recently acquired collections that will be announced very soon. One I can mention though is a beautiful collection of Caribbean literature, donated by one of our former academics. We plan to start work on this collection in 2024 alongside some work to process a collection of African literature including works in the African Writers Series. Keep an eye on our social media channels for updates. And if you are not already following us do have a look at the Special Collections and Archives Advent Calendar – it’s on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram @UniKentArchives. 

Beth (University Archivist)

2023 has been full of highlights and it is hard to pick out a few special things to represent such a busy year!

With the University Archive collections this year I focussed on the archives of the Colleges. At the beginning of the year I started a huge (and still ongoing) project to sort and catalogue the enormous Eliot College archive. This has now been un-boxed and arranged in a logical way, and cataloguing is on-going. This is a huge step forward in preserving the history of these important institutions within the University, and there are many fascinating records coming out of this.

We also received a brilliant collection of literary manuscripts from alumnus Faustin Charles, a storyteller and poet, originally from Trinidad and who studied at the University of Kent from 1977-1981. Faustin is an important voice in Caribbean poetry and storytelling, and his collection of manuscripts and correspondence will provide a fascinating insight into his work.

The archive collection of Faustin Charles, Caribbean storyteller and poet, being catalogued at the University of Kent Special Collections and Archives.

With the UK Philanthropy Archive collections we have continued to build and expand this growing collection receiving a new collection from the Hilden Charitable Trust in the last few weeks! We have been involved with two great events to showcase the wider philanthropy collections and begin to share information about the content and its importance for research. In April we held a mini-display of material at the Understanding Philanthropy conference, and then later in November we helped organise the 15th Anniversary Colloquium for the Centre for Philanthropy, Philanthropy: Past, Present and Future, which included our 3rd annual Shirley Lecture. This year we were delighted to welcome Orlando Fraser KC, the Chair of Charity Commission of England and Wales, who delivered an interesting lecture of the role of philanthropy in the charity sector. We were able to showcase the UK Philanthropy Archive collections at this event, giving tours of the collections talking to participants about their value for research.

Display of philanthropy related items for the Centre for Philanthropy’s 15th Anniversary Colloquium in November 2023.

Our exhibition schedule has been jam packed this year beginning with the 100 Years: TS Eliot’s The Wasteland which was on until April, after which we installed the Migrating Materia Medica exhibition in collaboration with colleagues in the Schools of English.  In August we added a fabulous short term exhibition on zines and zine making, called “Zines Zines Zines!” which explored the history of this popular genre of self-publishing and allowed us to display some of our zine collections, modern poetry and artist books, and also a loaned collection of zines from the Queer Zine Library.

The zine we made to support the Zines Zines Zines exhibition this year.

We have ended the year by installing our new exhibition – which has been curated by a fab team of volunteers to kick off our celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the British Cartoon Archive at the University. The first cartoons arrived at Kent in 1973 and the Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature opened in 1975 – which later developed into the British Cartoon Archive. Between 2023 and 2025 we are running a programme of events and activities to mark this significant anniversary. The 50/50 Project, where our volunteers have selected 50 cartoons reflecting the 50 years of the British Cartoon Archive, was the first of our celebratory activities and was launched in October. The exhibition will be on display until the end of February so do come along and see it if you can.

In addition to all of this – a particular highlight for me this year was in organising and delivering our Telling Our Tales series of workshops, held in June, in the run up to Refugee Week. This series of creative workshops related to our project and exhibition in 2022, Reflections on the Great British Fish and Chips. The workshops explored the ways in which we tell, share and preserve stories of migration and movement. Working alongside our amazing colleague Basma El Doukhi, we invited speakers to run artist-led workshops where participants learned about sharing migration stories and how these can be expressed and recorded through portraiture and photography. We held an In Conversation event between Basma and Rania Saadalah, a Palestinian Refugee, who shared her photography work where she lives in the refugee camps in Lebanon. Our final workshop was with Paul Dudman from the Living Refugee Archive at the University of East London, who talked about how to preserve stories of migration and the lived experiences of migrants living in Britain.

The workshops were all thoughtful and impactful events, that encouraged us to challenge stereotypes, build better relationships with people in our communities, and foster a spirit of understanding and compassion for others. This sentiment seems particularly important to highlight at this time of devastation and suffering in the ongoing war between the Israeli and Palestinian people. It remains vital that the stories and experiences of refugees and those with lived experience of migration are heard, shared and preserved to ensure their voices do not go unrecorded.

Poster for one of the Telling our Tales workshops, held by Paul Dudman and Beth Astridge.

Clair (Digital Archivist)

Once again, it’s been an incredibly busy year for Special Collections and Archives, and if you can excuse the cliché, it has really flown by! There’s been lots of enjoyable projects along the way, but I’ve chosen just three to talk about in this year’s round-up.

Firstly, we’ve had a bumper year for volunteering! Volunteers bring so much to our service, and help us achieve more than we could ever do alone with our small team. We’ve had the pleasure of working with over 20 individual volunteers this year on various tasks and projects. In particular, we’ve run two volunteer projects related to the British Cartoon Archive (BCA) this year. The first was the 50/50 project where volunteers were asked to research, select and curate an exhibition of 50 items from the BCA to celebrate 50 years since the founding of the collection. The second was the Cartooning Covid-19 project, where volunteers supported us in making over 400 cartoons published during the Covid-19 pandemic available to the public via our catalogue. It’s been such a pleasure working with all of our fantastic volunteers this year, and we hope to continue to work with some of them again in the next.

Our 50/50 volunteers.

In terms of cataloguing, I had a blast sorting and cataloguing material from our Mark Thomas Collection in the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive (BSUCA) this year. The Mark Thomas Collection has been part of BSUCA since its very beginnings, with the earliest set of records being deposited in 2013, and we were delighted to receive an accrual to his collection in 2020/21. This new batch of records contained notebooks, publicity, audiovisual material, and material related to his radio and TV work. In addition to this cataloguing, I also had the help of two work experience students in sorting and cataloguing the significant ‘100 Acts of Minor Dissent’ series. Records can be viewed on our catalogue now: https://archive.kent.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=BSUCA%2fMT

100 Acts of Minor Dissent: Act 61-63 – the BASTARDTRADE logo (designed by Greg Matthews) is trade marked and was created as a symbol of bad corporate behaviour (BSUCA/MT/3/8/26).

Finally, in the first half of this year I was lucky enough to take part in the National Archives’ peer mentoring scheme. I really enjoyed the experience of being a mentee and benefited from having a very knowledgeable, kind and supportive mentor. The scheme was the perfect opportunity for me to take the leap in creating a Digital Asset Register for our digital collections. Having a Digital Asset Register in place is important as it enables us to have control over our digital objects (both born-digital and digitised) and helps keep us informed of the file formats we hold so that we can make decisions about any preservation actions we may wish to take. It’s a huge step forward in improving our digital preservation maturity, so that’s definitely something to celebrate!

Computer Laboratory, Nov 1977 (UKA/PHO/1/1014)

Daniella (Project Archivist)

2023 has been an exciting year for me as I joined Special Collections & Archives as a Project Archivist, working on two cataloguing projects – Craigmyle Consultants UK Ltd’s archive and the “Oh Yes It Is!”: Cataloguing the David Drummond Pantomime Collection project, funded by Archives Revealed a partnership programme between The National Archives, The Pilgrim Trust and the Wolfson Foundation.

Donated by the collector David Drummond, the collection contains materials relating to a range of pantomimes, such as Cinderella, Puss in Boots, and Sleeping Beauty, as well as ephemera and photographic materials showcasing Principal Boys and Principal Dames. There are also gorgeous costume designers by prolific costumer designers, such as Wilhelm and Archibald Chasemore. Positive steps have been made with the cataloguing and, so far, I have catalogued in draft materials relating to Florrie Forde, Albert Chevalier, Godfrey Tearle, and David Wood. My latest cataloguing work package has focused on items relating to the pantomime Aladdin, started to coincide with this year’s pantomime performance at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury. Watch this space to see these be added to our catalogue! Fantastic work is also being done by a wonderful group of volunteers who sorted and have been listing programmes and flyers for the pantomime Cinderella – they have made amazing progress and we can’t wait to share this with researchers.

Aladdin materials in the David Drummond Pantomime Collection.

Linked to the above, an absolute highlight of working on the David Drummond Pantomime Collection was going to the local pantomime at the Marlowe Theatre to watch Aladdin with my colleagues. We had an absolute blast watching the Dame strut her stuff whilst dodging the oncoming water guns!

Craigmyle’s archive is very different to the David Drummond Pantomime Collection and provides a different perspective to fundraising. It is interesting because the collection shows how this organisation, which was set up in 1959, helped charities across the United Kingdom fundraise. They work with a variety of clients ranging from Cancer Relief Macmillan to cathedrals and parish churches. Schools and education fundraising is of particular importance to Craigmyle. In fact, the company’s earliest focus was on this sector, with initial clients including The King’s School Ely, Tonbridge School, St John’s College Durham and Wycombe School. The project is well underway, and I have scoped what there is and begun to appraise and weed to select what we will be keeping for permanent preservation.

Working on Craigmyle’s archive has also given me the chance to meet staff in the Centre for Philanthropy, and Beth and I had the exciting opportunity to work with Professor Beth Breeze and Dr Karl Wilding to organise the Philanthropy Past, Present and Future colloquium. We had over 80 people register and attend, and has fantastic talks from Michael Seberich and Orlando Fraser, Chair of the Charity Commission for England and Wales. It was also a great chance to get the Craigmyle collection out and engage participants with what research can be done with this archive.

We’ve had an exciting end to the year by appointing two Archive Assistants, Cassie and Farradeh, who have joined me on the project to catalogue Craigmyle’s archive. We’re thrilled for Cassie and Farradeh to be a part of the team and they are sorting, listing, and repackaging appeal literature that forms a part of this collection. They have made an amazing start and have the following to say about their experience on this project so far:

Cassie: “I’ve only been working on the project for a couple of weeks so far but I already feel like I’ve learned so many new things about working in archives, and about the philanthropy sector. It’s been fascinating working through the new Craigmyle collection and I can’t wait to see what else we find and discover the ways in which this material can contribute to the UK Philanthropy Archive”.

Farradeh: “It’s really exciting to see what goes on behind the scenes at an archive, and have an active part in the formation of a new collection. It has made me see archives in a different light, understanding the thought and care archivists put into their craft, and appreciating the level of nuance that goes into executive decisions”.

Cassie and Farraday working on the Craigmyle Archive.

Outside of my collections work, Karen and I contributed to Dr Suzanna Ivanic’s module The Early Modern World: Conflict & Culture, 1450-1750. I gave a lecture about the recordkeeping revolution and archives between the sixteenth century and mid-eighteenth century. I also supported Karen and Christine in delivering the seminars for this module, during which students were able to examine and handle some of the spectacular early modern printed texts in the collection, including editions of William Lambarde’s Perambulation of Kent, William Somner’s Antiquities of Canterbury, and indentures ranging from the reigns of Henry VI to Elizabeth I that are found within the Ronald Baldwin collection.

Christine (Special Collections and Archives Coordinator)

This has been my first full year working as the Special Collections and Archives Coordinator, and it’s been a real opportunity to increase my knowledge of our collections and support a variety of digital and in person engagement activity – in the Autumn term alone, we engaged 177 UG and PG students through seminars, not to mention individual readers, school groups and prospective open day students.

Earlier this year I did a #FacsimileFridays series on Instagram to shine a spotlight on what is often underprized and overlooked – for facsimiles are copies, not originals. However, they increase the circulation potential of unique items and thereby fulfil an important place in telling the history of the book. The knowledge I gleaned from many of these items also became pertinent to my teaching of a seminar on Chaucer this December for third year School of English students, in which we were considering very early manuscripts and print technology.

Produced between 1330-40, the Auchinleck manuscript gives an idea of reading practices pre-Chaucer: it consists principally of romances (think Arthuriana) along with other secular tales and religious pieces. Chaucer died in 1400, just before the advent of the printing press, and no copies of his works survive from his lifetime. The most famous of 15th-century manuscript versions of his work is undoubtedly the Ellesmere Chaucer, which became the authoritative example for organizing the Canterbury Tales. It’s written in the hand of a single scribe, and is incredibly grand both in its use of blank space and famous miniature illustrations of the Canterbury pilgrims. You may even be familiar with one of these, for its portrait of Chaucer is blown up on the side of the former Nasons building in the Canterbury high street! Now in the Huntington Library, our monochromatic facsimile still gives us access to the scale and content of the original. The first printing of the Canterbury Tales was William Caxton’s 1476 version, and the earliest printed version of Chaucer that we hold dates to 1598. With ‘Dorothy Smallwood’ inscribed on the title page, we know this copy once had female readership and it is also fascinating for its marginalia showing just how much its readers relied on a glossary to make sense of Chaucer’s language just 200 years after it was first circulated. William Caxton was also responsible for bringing Mallory’s Morte D’Arthur to an English audience, and we are really lucky to have a facsimile of this work because only one and a half of Caxton’s original version survive to date. Given the depth of the book, and the pressure reading puts on the spine, this is not surprising – original copies would literally have been read to pieces.

The Ellesmere Chaucer (F PD 1865 Classified sequence).

Le morte d’Arthur (Q PD 2040 Classified sequence).

From the history of books to the art of books, I have had several opportunities this year to appreciate the variety of forms books can take and really get to grips with the non-textual components of books which is crucial to special collections cataloguing. In cataloguing our Children’s Literature Collection, I had to give condition and provenance notes as well as a physical description of each book, noting such varied features as illustrated fly-leaves, dust jackets, fold-out maps, pages of publisher’s advertisements, volvelle frontispieces and pop-up engineering. Children’s books are a joy to handle because they are so self-conscious of being tactile interactive objects, and they have proved inspirational – alongside our artist books – when displayed at book-making workshops led by Dr Stella Bolaki at Discovery Planet, Ramsgate. It has been a particular privilege for me to accompany our collections to a different venue off campus and engage different audiences, notably children, and witness them transpose their awe for special collections into creative responses.

This year : next year (PZ 8.3 DEL Children’s Literature Collection).

Les grotesques : en quatre tableaux (PZ 8 Children’s Literature Collection).

Mandy (Special Collections and Archives Assistant)

Over this past year I have been digitalizing our Hector Breeze collection, they are very interesting to scan and the way that they have been drawn.

HB0005, Hector Breeze Collection.

HB0011, Hector Breeze Collection.

I have also been scanning our cartoons collection, to see how they have changed over the last few years is so interesting, changes in the government also.

Sam (Project Digitisation Administrator)

In my first year as an official member of the Special Collections team, I have been cataloguing and digitising the charmingly offbeat world of Lawrie Siggs (1900-1972), a cartoonist who worked for various publications (including Punch, John Bull and Lilliput) for 35 years.

Here are a few examples to set the tone.

Pinch Me, SIG0307.

No He Doesn’t Talk, SIG0319.

Jacqueline (Curation and Discovery Administrator)

The theatre designer Edward Gordon Craig described himself as “fond of print.” His designs for theatre stage sets and scenery surpassed possibility in his time and he turned to typography and woodcuts. I have spent this year with the collections of three men who can all be described as fond of print. Arnold Rood’s collection is centred around Gordon Craig and his circle. It includes Craig’s woodcuts in print. I began the year at the end of Carl Giles’ collection (the cartoonist Giles) where I found a set of Puffin Picture Books from the 1940s-50s, their design and illustrations redolent of a return to delight in books after austerity. After Rood, I’ve been cataloguing the periodicals in Jack Reading and Colin Rayner’s collection; they were thorough collectors who focussed on theatre and literature. Last week amongst odd issues I came across a complete set of The Masque, a small and pretty journal of 9 issues each one on a theme. Issue 5 is The Masque of Christmas, presenting dramatic JOYS of the season to you.

The Masque, Reading-Rayner Literature Collection.

Stu (Curation and Discovery Administrator)

Over 90 titles added to British Cartoon Archive Library this year. Most memorable was probably the stunning cold war era illustrations in, Drawing the curtain : the Cold War in cartoons / Althaus, Frank.

Also Daily Mirror reflections : being 100 cartoons (and a few more) culled from the pages of the Daily Mirror. [Vol. I] / Haselden, W. K. (William Kerridge), 1872-1953, formerly owned by prime minister Stanley Baldwin.

Quite moving and of current topical interest, A child in Palestine : the cartoons of Naji al-Ali / ʻAlī, Nājī.- This collection of drawings chronicles the Israeli occupation, the corruption of the regimes in the region, and the plight of the Palestinian people. The images have bold symbolism and starkness to them.

The bottle / Cruikshank, George, 1792-1878, – This is a really interesting little pamphlet promoting temperance through a cautionary tale of the downfall of a family brought about by the evils of drink. No publication date but probably late 19th century.

Matthias (Curation and Discovery Administrator)

I have been working on the Shirley Toulson Collection this year, a collection of over 400 poetry books from the estate of the late author and poet Shirley Toulson. Handling a writer’s private library felt very special and personal. The books, many of them rare editions by small presses, often had personal notes and handwritten dedications by the authors. Often I found postcards or letters inserted between the pages. My personal highlight was a handwritten, seemingly unpublished poem by Shirley Toulson I found inside a W.H. Auden poetry volume.

Collected shorter poems 1927-1957, PR 6001.U4 AUD Shirley Toulson Poetry Collection.

Our reading room will be closed from 16th December 2023 and will reopen 16th January 2024 – we hope you all have a very happy and peaceful break.

An intern’s experience: Jenni-Rose Nicholl

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We were lucky enough to work with student Jenni during her internship from March to April 2023, as part of her Classical & Archaeological Studies course at the University of Kent.

Jenni worked on a variety of collections during her time with us, including the Colin Seymour-Ure and Holt Bairnsfather collections in the British Cartoon Archive, the Papers of the Shirley Foundation collection in the UK Philanthropy Archive, and the Max Tyler Music Hall collection. She also assisted us with facilitating seminars and school visits. Jenni writes about her experience below.

Objects from the Holt Bairnsfather collection being sorted and packaged in our workroom.

An internship is designed in its nature to provide the intern with real-world experience in the relevant field of work they are completing their study in. Having recently completed my internship with the University of Kent’s archive team, it can safely be said that I have gained a tremendous amount of experience and hands-on professional context in which to take my degree further.

From my first day being shown around the archives by the incredibly knowledgeable Clair Waller, my mind was blown by the sheer amount of work and effort that our incredible archivists do every single day in order to keep the University archives, alongside the British Cartoon archive, up to date and relevant for today’s scholars and students alike. By far my personal favourite part of the internship was cleaning the books given to the archives team from individual’s personal collections [ed – the Colin Seymour-Ure collection], being carefully instructed as to the care and management of dirty and weak covers and how to prevent the books from deteriorating further.

A portrait of Professor-Colin-Seymour-Ure

Professor-Colin-Seymour-Ure

Whilst partaking in my internship I was regularly using a scanner and uploading photos in an organised manner onto the computer, something a self-confessed technophobe such as myself found greatly beneficial for future employment as well as daily life. A career in archaeology would not be such without numerous types of paperwork in which listing remains crucial.

A photograph of Dame Stephanie Shirley standing in front of a large promotional sign at the 2019 Linkedin Summit, Talent Connect On Tour.

Dame Stephanie Shirley at the February 2019 Linkedin Summit. Papers of the Shirley Foundation.

Through my internship I was instructed in the use of listing sheets and how to correctly fill them out directly benefiting my future prospects in the archaeological field. My internship has greatly grown my confidence in a professional environment and with the instruction of Clair Waller, Beth Astridge and Karen Brayshaw, I have gained invaluable experience and fond memories for my future career.

A photogrpah of Jenni's hand holding a book that has been laid between boards and wrapped with cotton tying tape.

An example of a book Jenni cleaned before applying a bit of collections care by wrapping the book between boards using cotton tying tape. This helps to preserve the book, providing support to otherwise fragile or damaged bindings.

 

 

 

Special Collections and Archives highlights: 2022 edition

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Yet again 2022 has been a year packed with activity and fun! We’ve seen a number of changes for the Special Collections and Archives team; adapting back to life on campus, welcoming new colleagues, fully reopening our Reading Room service post-pandemic, and embarking on new projects. We’ve also had a bumper year for volunteers, who have been working with our theatre collections, British Cartoon Archive, and medieval and early modern manuscripts.  

As is tradition, it’s time for us to take a step back, reflect on what we’ve achieved, and tell you about some of the highlights… 

Karen (Special Collections and Archives Manager) 

It’s been an exciting year in special Collections and Archives. We’ve seen a number of changes in our team. In February we welcomed Beth Astridge to the role of University Archivist – you’ll recall that Beth was our project archivist for the UK Philanthropy Archive so it was exciting to be able to welcome her to a fulltime position. Beth has made her mark already in organising and delivering some excellent projects – you can read more about that in Beth’s section. We welcomed Rachel to our team on secondment from the Collections Management team. Rachel is working parttime as the project archivist for the UK Philanthropy Archive continuing the amazing work Beth was doing. In the spring we said goodbye to Jo, who worked as our Senior Library Assistant for almost a decade. Jo now has a fabulous job in London – though she still finds time to pop in and see us occasionally! In the summer we welcomed Christine in Jo’s place. Christine is now firmly established as our Special Collections and Archives Coordinator. Christine is doing a brilliant job of curating already established and new content for seminar groups as well as assisting with the research and selection for our latest exhibition 100 Years: T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.  

The logo for our T.S.Eliot exhibition, featuring a cartoon by John Jensen of Eliot in profile.

A poster advertising our Eliot exhibition, featuring a cartoon by John Jensen of Eliot in profile (JJ0584).

Clair and I had great fun meeting and working with Major and Mrs Holt to prepare their Bairnsfather Archive for addition the British Cartoon Archive – see Clair’s piece for a taste of what we have. We are also working on acquiring some other significant cartoon archives in the next year – which is especially thrilling as in 2023 we celebrate 50 years of Cartoons at Kent! Watch our social media for more details soon.  

Mandy has been beavering away making sure our cuttings collection is kept up to date as well as digitising the beautiful photographs of Canterbury that we acquired a few years ago. You can see some in examples in Mandy’s section below.  

Digitisation work has moved forward in a huge way this year. The Phase One kit is now fully functional and being put to good use – see what Alex and Matt have to say below for the latest from them. 

We’ve also been lucky to tempt our former colleague Jacqueline back to the fold – Jacqueline has been working as a project cataloguer to get the books from Carl Giles Archive catalogued. Many of the books are now available on our online catalogue with more to follow in the New Year.  

Earlier this year we received a small grant from UKRI AHRC to support some new collaborative research. We were delighted to work in partnership with our colleagues at the University’s School of Arts, Professor Helen Brooks and Dr Oliver Double, with Helen being primary investigator and Olly and myself acting as co-investigators. As a group, we were particularly interested in exploring representations of gender in popular performance, giving us the opportunity to contribute to the discourse on gender expression and new audiences with diverse, inclusive histories of performance and gender. 

A handmade poster featuring images of Hetty King, Dan Leno, and a costme design for a Principal boy, along with text advertising the event.

Poster for the ‘Beyond the Binary’ project

Beyond the Binary: Performing Gender Now and Then, brought together students, public researchers, performance-makers, archivists and academics from all backgrounds and from across the gender spectrum to undertake original research into our historic music hall and pantomime archives. They worked together on line to unearth histories of gender play and presentation hidden within the collections. 

The research group also had the opportunity to spend a day in Special Collections and Archives and  helped us to deliver a day at the Beaney Museum. 

The final event of Beyond the Binary took place on Thursday 29 September, with a spectacular show, Rowdy Dowdy Boys and Saucy Seaside Girls at the Gulbenkian Arts Centre, Canterbury. The event brought together music, comedy and history. This new performance-lecture was co-created with non-binary folk performers, the Lunatraktors and featured comedian Mark Thomas. The Lunatraktors created new work inspired by items in the collection, which were displayed on a screen and on the stage – including comedy boobs, which were displayed on a specially made stand (adapted from a music stand) alongside one of the pantomime Dame costumes worn by Eddie Reindeer. Mark Thomas performed a hilarious piece he had written on the day – again inspired by the collections.  

An image of two songsheet covers. On the left is Mille Hylton, 'The rowdy Dowdy Boys'. On the cover stands mille Hylton in a full suit and top hat. On the right is Hetty King's, 'Oh! Those girls! (those saucy seaside girls)'. On the cover we see a photograph of Hetty King, standing wearing a full suit and hat, and holding a walking cane.

Two songsheets: Mille Hylton, ‘The rowdy Dowdy Boys’; Hetty King, ‘Oh! Those girls! (those saucy seaside girls)’

This year we were also delighted to succeed in our bid for the Archives Revealed Cataloguing Grants scheme. Our cataloguing project –Oh Yes It Is! – will be starting early in the New Year and will continue throughout 2023. The funding award will make an enormous difference in how we make the David Drummond Pantomime collection accessible to everyone. We will unlock its potential for researchers, historians, performers, and all those interested in the history of theatre and pantomime. We can’t wait to get started! 

A small pile of 12 theatre programmes on a white table.

Some items from the David Drummond Pantomime Archive

Stop the Press! We’ve also just heard that in the New Year we will be receiving material from the first British Muslim pantomime Cinder’Aliyah. I can’t wait to share more news about it with you all when we have the details.  

I think 2023 is also going to be filled with activity and fun!  

Beth (University Archivist) 

2022 has been my first year as University Archivist, as well as finishing off a few projects relating to the UK Philanthropy Archive, so there has been a lot going on!  

Highlights of the work on our philanthropy collections include researching and installing the ‘Exploring Philanthropy’ exhibition which was up from April to November and allowed us to display items from the UK Philanthropy Archive for the first time and introduce visitors to the history of philanthropy; welcoming Fran Perrin to the University to deliver the second Shirley Lecture on open data and philanthropy; and presenting at the Association of Charitable Foundations conference in November 2022, alongside Felicity Wates (Director of the Wates Foundation) and Sufina Ahmad (Director of the John Ellerman Foundation) about the value of projects that reflect on the history of trusts and foundations with some ‘how to’ tips about dealing with your archive records. A lovely celebration to finish the year was that Dame Stephanie Shirley – the founder of our UK Philanthropy Archive – visited Canterbury to receive her honorary degree. It was my first Canterbury Cathedral gradation, and it was wonderful to experience it with Dame Stephanie!   

A photogrpah of Fran Perrin delivering a speech in front of an audience. Fran stands in front of some windows wearing a red top and black blazer. The audience sit on chairs and face away from the camera.

Fran Perrin delivering the second Shirley Lecture, ‘Open Data and Philanthropy’

In University Archive work, I managed a team of amazing student interns who worked on a survey of the paintings, sculpture, photographs and other artworks on display in the College buildings. This survey led to some new acquisitions to the University Archive as we explored the Colleges!  We located the archive records of Rutherford College and also some of the records relating to the early days of Darwin College. These have now been added to the University Archive collection and I’ll be looking at cataloguing the Eliot, Rutherford and Darwin College archive collections later in 2023.  

We have put on some fantastic exhibitions this year which definitely deserve a mention in this summary. In June, with funding from the Migration and Movement Award Fund, we installed the exhibition ‘Reflections on the Great British Fish and Chips’ after working with a Research and Curation Group of volunteers, and our colleague Basma El Doukhi, who explored the collections and co-curated a display of original material looking at themes relating to migration, movement, global food production and the fishing industry. 

A photograph of a small group of people standing in the Templeman Library gallery space, looking at the exhibition.

The launch event for the ‘Fish and Chips’ exhibition.

With further funding from The National Archives’ Archives Testbed Fund we recently held a brilliant sensory event – Taste the Archive – where were hosted a food sharing viewing of the exhibition where we tasted fish and chips, falafel, ma’amoul, hummous and Arabic breads – all of which are featured in the exhibition. It was lovely to share food and learn more about other traditions and cultures in this sensory way. 

A photograph of six people crowded around a table of various foods.

The ‘Taste the Archive’ event

We ended the year with a new exhibition celebrating 100 years since the publication of TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. This is a great exhibition featuring some unique items from across the collections so come along and see it before April 2023! 

Clair (Digital Archivist) 

This year seems to have gone by so quickly; it’s a little hard to come to terms with the fact that we’re already writing our highlights of the year! Nevertheless, here we are in December.  

This year I had the pleasure of surveying and accessioning the Holt Bairnsfather Collection. Major Tonie and Mrs Valmai Holt are a couple who live in East Kent. They founded Major and Mrs Holts Battlefield Tours in 1978, offering tours to the public of famous battlefields across the world, before becoming authors. Together they have published over 30 books, including a biography of Bruce Bairnsfather. Their passion for Bairnsfather began in the 1970s, and since then they have amassed an extensive collection of Bairnsfather memorabilia, artworks and collectables. 

Left: Major Tonie and Mrs Valmai Holt with their publications. Right: some publications from the Holt Bairnsfather Collection.

Tonie and Valmai welcomed Karen and I into their home to assess and survey the collection, before we listed and packaged it up for the archive. It includes pottery, china, books, journals and magazines, ephemera, metalware, sketches and artworks. An incredible collection, it really gives an insight in to the impact of Bairnsfather’s work and the popularity of Old Bill and the Better ‘Ole, even some 60+ years after his death.  

A comparison of Bruce Bairnsfather’s ‘Well, if you knows of a better ‘ole, go to it’ (A Fragment from France, 24 November 1915) and Martin Rowson’s ‘Great War Studies – Module 8’ (Guardian, 06 Jan 2014. ©Martin Rowson, MRD0392)

We will continue to sort and organise the collection and hope to be able to add it to our catalogue in detail over the next year. 2023 brings the 50th anniversary of the British Cartoon Archive, and I’m sure this collection will play an important part in celebrating its continued value, and historic significance.  

A cartoon in the style of Leonardo Da Vinci's 'Last Supper', but the characters have been replaced with the Giles family at Christmas dinner.

Ronald Carl Giles, ‘Well, if you know of a better hole to spend Christmas, go to it!’, Sunday Express, 1954. ©Express Syndication Ltd (GAC0102)

We’ve also made some positive steps this year towards improving our digital storage capacity and structure, after experiencing some challenges over the last few years with third party storage and disparate SAN locations. This work will have a real impact on our ability to continue to preserve and protect our digital and digitised collections in a robust and standardised way.

Christine (Special Collections and Archives Coordinator) 

The greatest joy for me this year has been in planning and delivering diverse workshops in Special Collections and Archives to support graduate skills training and taught UG and PG modules. Over the course of 11 different sessions, I had the opportunity to meet and work with 135 students from the University of Kent and beyond, whose engagement with our materials established new insights and lines of enquiry. 

Delving deeper into the archives of Monika Bobinska and Josie Long – two stand-up comedians and comedy club managers – I got to appreciate the home-spun and community-driven nature of their endeavours. These were/are truly pioneering women in their sector who cultivated emergent talent by emphasising inclusivity and creative freedom. Their clubs – respectively, the Meccano Club and the Lost Treasures of the Black Heart – provided space for experimental performance and audience participation. Just look at these charismatic felt audience contributions representing stops on the London Underground… 

A collage of contributions from audience members. They are paper based and very colourful, including handmade images of a house, and another of Bow Church.

Creations that represent areas of London where audience members live (BSUCA/JL/2/6/4/4)

And this unassumingly pub-battered, pint-stained, contacts book that lists the crem de la crem of the alternative cabaret circuit – from Jo Brand to Mark Thomas.  

A photograph of the front cover of a black notebook with a sticker in the top right corner noting 'Cabaret'.

A contact books for the Meccano Club with contacts for comedians, agents and venues (BSUCA/MB/1/1/6)

Another collection I’ve particularly enjoyed getting to know this term is our Modern Firsts Poetry collection, which boasts an astonishing variety of rare small press items and even unpublished proofs from British and American poets of the 20th century. Some of our wonderful volunteers have worked on repackaging this collection this term in order to better preserve the more delicate items – many of which are loose leaves, single sheets, or folded or bound in intriguing ways. This hands-on work has enabled us to not only improve our catalogue records and archival practice, but also to uncover some truly unique items. With examples that are at once abstract and incredibly tactile, this collection surely epitomises Modernist aesthetics and critical thought; ‘these fragments I have shored against my ruins’ testify, too, to the enduring legacy of T.S. Eliot – check out our current exhibition celebrating the centenary of The waste land!  

Rachel (Project Archivist) 

This year I moved into the role of project archivist for the UK Philanthropy Archive here at Kent, so a highlight for me was learning about the amazing collections we hold! This year saw us add two new collections to the Philanthropy Archive – those of the Wates Foundation and Craigmyle Fundraising Consultants. 

The Wates Foundation archive is our first collection from a fully family run organisation. The organisation was first set up by three brothers, Allan, Norman and Ronald Wates. The Foundation has three family committees, one for each of the brothers, which means that the work they support is hugely varied. The archive contains project files for each organisation the Foundation has supported, ranging from city farms, to local sports teams, to crime and drug rehabilitation. There is also a wide range of literature and media outputs from these projects. 

A photograph of four items from the Wates archive, including 2 VHS tapes, and 2 DVDs.

Four items from the Wates Foundation Archive

The Craigmyle Archive is a fascinating one, looking at philanthropy and fundraising from a different perspective from our other collections. Until now all our material has been from philanthropists themselves, whereas Craigmyle are professional fundraisers, working with charities and organisations who are looking to fundraise for projects. The company was founded in 1959, at a time where professional fundraising in the UK was basically non-existent. Their early focus was on supporting fundraising for schools, and there is a huge amount of material relating to all the work they have done in that area. The collection even has records of their work with other people who feature in our archive, such as Dame Stephanie Shirley, our founding donor! Clients supported by Craigmyle include Salisbury Cathedral, St. Paul’s School for Boys, Macmillan Cancer Relief, Kingston Theatre Trust and The Woodland Trust, to name just a few. This is by far the biggest collection the Philanthropy Archive has taken in yet, and a dedicated archivist will be being employed to work with it next year, so watch this space! 

Outside of the collections, my highlight for this year has definitely been attending the degree congregation at Canterbury Cathedral last month where the University of Kent awarded Dame Stephanie Shirley an honorary degree.

A photograph from the graduation ceremony. The image shows the following people standing together in a group (left to right): Dr Beth Breeze, Dame Stephanie Shirley, Rachel Dickinson, Beth Astridge.

A photograph from the graduation ceremony. Left to right: Dr Beth Breeze, Dame Stephanie Shirley, Rachel Dickinson, Beth Astridge.

I graduated from Kent in 2012, but this was my first time seeing a ceremony from the other side. Canterbury Cathedral is such a lovely setting for a graduation ceremony, it feels appropriately grand for recognising all the work put in by our students to achieve their degrees. This was also my first time meeting Dame Stephanie in person. We discovered it was honorary degree number 31 for her, but she was still incredibly grateful for the recognition and genuinely had a wonderful time in a glorious setting. The speech she gave referenced her support of the University, including her ties to our archive and her work with the Tizard Centre, and her message to all our graduands was heartfelt and really well received. 

Matt (Digitisation Manager) 

As Alex has alluded to below, after the install and learning phase of 2021, 2022 has been the year of the Phase One. It’s made a huge difference to our digitisation abilities as we’ve learnt to make the most of the whole system. As we progress with our pre-planned projects we’ve started to consider what it can do for us in the next years and the other collections we can digitise. When looking at collections we’ve had for years it’s exciting to have a new perspective on them now that we can digitise them in such amazing detail. 

We’ve also spent some time in the last few months refurbishing a new space for our digitisation systems so that we can bring it all into one custom space, (and also so that we can finally relinquish half of the Special Collections work room back to our colleagues). We’ll be moving in at the start of next year. 

A photograph of an empty room, with concrete walls , with white shelves high up on the wall.

Our new digitisation space in the Templeman Library

Earlier in the year we completed a project assessing our preservation and access systems for our digital collections which means next year we can move forward into testing and hopefully acquiring a new system that will mark a significant step forward in our digital offering to users of our various services. 

Mandy (Special Collections and Archives Assistant) 

Here are a few photos that I have been lucky enough to scan over this past year.

three images left to right: A black and white photograph of a delivery van parked up on a road, with the load on the back of the van spilling over in to the street. A black and white photograph of an elephant being paraded through Canterbury High Street. A man walks in front of the elephant, talking to a policeman in uniform riding a bicycle. A black and white photograph of a garage with a van in the driveway.

Three photographs from the Crampton Canterbury Photograph Collection

They are from our Crampton Canterbury Photograph Collection, and show how much Canterbury has changed throughout the years. 

Alex (Digitisation Administrator) 

2022 has seen the new Phase One photographic reproduction rig come into its own. Alongside colleagues Matt and Clair we developed efficient work processes for the digitisation of artwork and objects within the collections. Once we had the rig up and running in early February the main focus has been on the Beaverbrook Collection of cartoon artwork. The Beaverbrook collection is significant, containing original cartoon artwork by major cartoonists published in some of Britain’s leading newspapers from the 1930s through to the 1960s. To date we have captured around half of the entire collection, over 4000 high-definition images. I’ve found it a fascinating process, particularly the insight it provides to the day to day “talking points” during a turbulent period of global history. 

David Low, 'The Nightmare Passes', Evening Standard, 8th May 1945 (DL2416)

A David Low cartoon from the Beaverbrook Collection, ‘The Nightmare Passes’, Evening Standard, 8th May 1945 (DL2416)

In the audio-visual domain, I completed the digitisation the University of Kent Archive collection of vulnerable analogue magnetic audio cassette tape recordings in the first part of 2022. Since then, I have moved on to digitise of a number of smaller audio cassette collections within the greater Special Collections and Archives stores. These have included recordings from the British Stand Up Comedy Archive, the Ronald Baldwin local history collection and the R. W. Richardson collection of recordings relating to the 1980s Miners’ Strike, particularly in East Kent. 

A photograph of a cassette tape, lying on top of its case. Behind it is an audio deck used for digitisation.

One of the many audio cassettes Alex has digitised this year!

Most recently I have been digitising a series of interview recordings carried out by the University’s Dr Philip Boobbyer. The interviews were conducted during the 1990s in post-Soviet Russia. The subjects of the interviews were various activists and dissidents from the Soviet period. The content has particular contemporary relevance in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Jacqueline (Project cataloguer) 

I am cataloguing the personal library of Giles the cartoonist kept within his archive in the British Cartoon Archive. The library shows Giles’s distinctive set of interests reflecting both his work as a cartoonist and home life near Ipswich in Suffolk. He indexed books with coloured drinking straws to mark images that he might use as references. His collection of works of cartoons from the two world wars, together with contemporary photographic books give a poignant insight into lived experience of those events.

A photograph of books from the Giles library on a shelf.

An image of books from the Giles library

There are sections on farming, on architecture, sailing and ships and series of how to draw books, I-Spy books and even an Argos catalogue. The mix of ideas for cartoons and his everyday life appears here in his copy of ‘Teach yourself brickwork’ with “Lady Diana” written the other way up on his plan for a brick wall with measurements inside the front cover. 

A photograph of a book open to the front page. Inserted in the book is a piece of paper with an image of a brick wall drawn in red pen, alongide some measurements.

An image of the inside of ‘Teach yourself brickwork’ with an inserted note inside

Dame Stephanie Shirley – STEM pioneer

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11th February is International Day of Women and Girls in Science, which celebrates the vital role that women and girls play in science and technology. To mark this important day we are showcasing some of the material from the collection of Dame Stephanie Shirley CH.

Dame Stephanie “Steve” Shirley is an IT entrepreneur, successful businesswoman, and philanthropist. After arriving in the UK as an unaccompanied child refugee on the Kindertransport in 1939, Dame Stephanie developed a remarkable drive and energy that led her to follow a career in mathematics and computing at a time that was unusual for girls and women. She went on to lead a hugely successful software and programming company that focussed on providing employment opportunities for women, especially those with dependents.

Dame Stephanie then dedicated her time and resources to projects that she passionately believed in – advocating for women in the workplace and in technology, researching autism and supporting families of autistic children, and developing projects in computing and information technology.

In 2019 she donated the archive of her charitable foundation – The Shirley Foundation – to the University of Kent to establish the UK Philanthropy Archive.

Dame Stephanie is a STEM pioneer – and an inspirational figure to girls and women who are passionate about STEM subjects. This blog provides some information about Dame Stephanie, her early life and career and her many lifetime achievements, illustrated by items from the Shirley Foundation archive collection in the UK Philanthropy Archive.

Arrival in the UK

Dame Stephanie was born in Germany in 1933 as Vera Buchthal. At the beginning of the Second World War, her parents sent her and her sister to safety in Britain on the Kindertransport. They arrived in 1939 as unaccompanied child refugees and were placed in foster care in Sutton Coldfield. She adopted the surname of her foster parents and became Stephanie Brook.

Dame Stephanie received this commemorative cover (collectable envelope) after it was released in 1999 on the 60th Anniversary of the Kindertransport. It was designed by Stanley Kacher and has a special Liverpool Street postmark.

Decorated commemorative cover (decorated envelope) with a sketch of a train with children arriving on the platform, and 4 stamps, and special postmark stamp. Text reads Operation Kindertransports 60th Anniversary 1939-1999

Commemorative Cover produced for the 60th Anniversary of the Kindertransport in 1999

Career in mathematics and computing

At school, Dame Stephanie began to show a talent for mathematics and took some extra lessons a local boy’s grammar school. She decided not to go to University, instead taking a role at the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, north-west London, in 1957. She worked as part of the team that developed ERNIE (Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment) an early computer which selected the Premium Bond numbers. She took extra evening classes to achieve an honours degree in mathematics. She then worked at CDL Ltd, the designers of the ICT-1301 computer.

This image shows one of Dame Stephanie’s copies of a research report on the work carried out by the team working on ERNIE (Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment)– note her name Miss VS Brook, on the top right corner.

Front cover of a text report showing the text "Post Office Engineering Department, Research Report no 14108, ERNIE - Mathematical work" with the name Miss VS Brook in the top right hand corner

Research Report on the ERNIE project c1957

 

Dame Stephanie on the far left with two male colleagues look at the screen of a piece of computer equipment in approximately 1957

Dame Stephanie and colleagues with the ERNIE equipment c1957

Freelance Programmers

After experiencing sexism, increasing discrimination against her gender, missed promotions and sometimes dealing with unwanted sexual advances, Dame Stephanie decided to run her own software company. With £6 initial investment, she founded her company Freelance Programmers, initially running from her dining room table. She employed a network of mainly female staff skilled at mathematics and programming. Freelance Programmers focussed on providing flexible working opportunities for women, especially those with dependents. This was especially important for Dame Stephanie and her husband Derek Shirley, after their son Giles was born in 1963.

While fairly successful, the company was still experiencing difficulty in attracting work. Dame Stephanie changed her name to “Steve” Shirley, used this name on her business correspondence, and achieved a vast improvement in success. Dame Stephanie became known as ‘Steve’ from this point onwards.

Freelance Programmers was later known as FI, then Xansa, and was later acquired by Steria now part of the Sopra Steria Group.  In 25 years as the Chief Executive, Dame Stephanie developed the company into a leading business technology group which pioneered new work practices and changed the position of professional women along the way.

The Shirley Foundation archive also contains annual reports and papers from the development of Freelance Programmers and its transition to FI Group Plc – including these distinctive annual reports from FI Group.

Three annual reports showing front covers only for the FI Group Plc. The first has multicoloured letters FI in the centre of the page and the text underneath is The Art of Partnership. The central report has a black background and several regular shapes in different colours . The final report on the right has a blue background and a green sound wave type image and the text "We recognise everyone is individual".

Annual Reports for the FI Group plc

Philanthropy

Dame Stephanie’s philanthropy focussed on her professional and personal interests: IT due to her skills and career in software and computing, and autism research due to her personal experiences after her son Giles was diagnosed with autism in 1966.

She decided early on in her philanthropic career that she wanted to support funding and research during her lifetime, and structured the Shirley Foundation with the aim to spend all of its funds, which was achieved in 2018 having made more than £67million in grants.

This included funding residential care homes and developing schools that more specifically met the needs of children and adults with autism. This focus continued after Giles sadly died in 1998. Dame Stephanie also focussed on funding research into autism, and improvements in practice relating to autism, to benefit autistic people and their communities.

Dame Stephanie also supported many IT and computing projects, and work that supported the role and development of women in STEM subjects.

An avid art collector, Dame Stephanie donated her entire collection of contemporary art and sculpture to the charity Paintings in Hospitals and to Prior’s Court School.

Lectures, Awards and Achievements

Dame Stephanie has delivered thousands of talks and lectures over 50 years about her work in computing and mathematics, the development of her business, her focus on flexible roles for women and motivation for and focus of her philanthropy. One example is this speech on Women in Data Processing – delivered in June 1980 while she was Vice-President of the British Computer Society.

Text page of a speech on Women in Data Processing June 1980

Women in Data Processing – speech delivered by Dame Stephanie Shirley in June 1980

Over her lifetime, she has achieved many awards and public recognitions of her achievements as a leader in the IT sector.

In 1980 she received an OBE – for her services to Industry. In 1992 she was elected as the first women Master of the IT livery company, the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, and was also the first women President of the chartered Computer Society. She was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2001. In the millennium honours Dame Stephanie was awarded with a DBE for services to IT, and then in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in June 2017 she was awarded the prestigious Order of Companions of Honour (CH) for services to IT and to philanthropy.

DBE medal in a boz with silk lining. The medal has a red and grey ribbon, a blue star, and a silver star emblem

DBE awarded to Dame Stephanie in 2000

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