Some celebrations

It may actually be slightly after Easter, but we’re only now coming to the end of our Spring term and winding down for the spring break. That means that we’ve spent this week enjoying all kinds of events to celebrate the hard work of students and staff since the beginning of 2015.

Students from the 'Women on Stage' groupTo start with, on Tuesday this year’s student curated exhibition on Victorian and Edwardian Theatre was launched. This module has been running for 5 years, with each year bringing new and exciting developments, and an excellent exhibition as the final piece of work (and this year was no exception)! Throughout the term, second year students have been working with the Theatre Collections here at Kent, and digital collections available elsewhere, whilst learning about theatre between 1860-1910. For the final assessment, the students work in groups, picking a topic of their choice to explore and then present their findings as an exhibition, with an associated website.

Choices of topic have always been diverse, and this year was no exception! Starting with the experience of theatregoing in the Victorian period, the exhibition moves through a comparison of East and West End theatre, the role of women on and off the stage and, finally, the ways in which the Jewish community were portrayed and potrayed themselves in the theatre.

The exhibition curators, with tutors Helen Brooks and Jane Gallagher.

The exhibition curators, with tutors Helen Brooks and Jane Gallagher.

This year, we have teamed up with the Gulbenkian who are hosting the exhibition in their Crossover Gallery, where it will run until 3 May. Do pop in to have a look – it’s free and open during the Gulbenkian’s opening hours.

View of the exhibition launchTuesday turned out to be rather a busy day, since we were also hosting student book launches all day in the reading room. This was part of the third year Book Project module, in which students create their own, original piece of writing an publish it as a physical item. The launch event is a chance for the students to read sections from their work (in front of a supportive audience) and to sell copies to guests. We’re currently in the process of ensuring that we have copies of all of these works in Special Collections, to complement the twentieth century small print press materials in the Modern First Editions Collection.

20150407_171146A huge congratulations to all of the students involved in both of these exciting pieces of work: we hope you enjoyed being a part of it!

And finally, talking of celebration, on Wednesday we got the chance to thank our hard working team of core volunteers with a trip to Canterbury 20150408_151203Cathedral Library, hosted by Cathedral Librarian Karen Brayshaw. Those who came along got to see rare and valuable books from the earliest years of the printing press through to the 19 century, including the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) and a Bible translated into a Native American language. Alongside this, of course, we got to enjoy the ambiance of the historical library and its beautiful books – and several people enjoyed the smell of rare books!

So that’s it for another term – although we will, of course, be on hand throughout the spring vacation for all of your research needs. As ever, the arrival of the sunshine provokes a mass exodus to studying out in the sunshine, and the end of term leads to a pervading atmosphere of calm and wellbeing through the Library. I hope that you enjoy the break, if you get one: we’ll certainly be making the most of the hiaitus, prior to the start of our Big Underground Move of all of our collections now scheduled to take place from 15 June.

Victorians, assassinations and monsters

Here we are at the end of the first week of term – and would you believe, it’s almost exactly a month since Christmas. With so much of January behind us already, we’re looking forward to the rest of the year and I’d like to take the opportunity just to mention some of the excitement we’ve got to come in the next few months.

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Playbill from Theatre Royal, Hull, 1850

On Monday, we had our first taught session with the Victorian and Edwardian Theatre students in the reading room. It’s always great to get to meet and talk to researchers, as well as providing materials to inspire them and help them with their discoveries. One of the great things about this module is that each time we’ve run it, all of the second year Drama students are swept up with enthusiasm for the materials and being able to use them in creative ways to explore a topic of their choice. Of course, we’re in the early days so far and tutors Ken Pickering and Mark Woolgar still have plenty of sessions left – covering topics as diverse as pantomime, Henry Irving and votes for women. We’re very much looking forward to getting to know the students and to support their work which leads to a public exhibition in April.

If you’d like to learn more about this module, or see examples of past exhibitions by students of this course, take a look at our Exhibition pages on the website. If you’re interested in setting up teaching opportunities with the collections, please do get in touch with us.

While we’re on the topic of exhibitions, we have a brand new exhibition in the Gallery this term. ‘The Bullet is Stronger than the Ballot‘ is built around the unique holdings on the British Cartoon Archive, and explores the theme of political assassination. This ties in with the Beaney’s season on the theme which features Manet’s ‘The Execution of Maximilian’ and John Opie’s eighteenth century painting, ‘The Murder of Thomas Becket’. More information about our exhibition, which will run until 2 March, is available on our website as well.

The Devil rides again...come and discover the monsters hidden in the library

The Devil rides again! Discover monsters hidden in the library

If you’re more interested in some mystery and the odd spine-chilling tale, the second lecture in our annual series could be the event for you! Monsters in the Library: M. R. James and bestiaries at Canterbury Cathedral will be presented by Diane Heath, who is an assistant lecturer in History at the University of Kent and also teaches at Canterbury Christ Church University. She will be telling us about her research into mythical monsters and beasts in the Cathedral’s collections, drawn together through the work of scholar and author Montague Rhodes James. I have been told that we may discover, as part of this lecture, the medieval methods for finding unicorns. In any case, it will be an intriguing evening which we hope will not result in any nightmares!

The talk will take place at the AV Theatre, Cathedral Lodge, in the Cathedral Precincts at 6.30 on Wednesday 12 Febuary, with refreshments from 6pm.

And that’s all we have time for this week, although I’m sure I’ll be updating you about all kinds of exciting and interesting aspects of our collections in the next months. I hope that we’ll see you at some of these events, and please do let us know what you think of them!

A flurry of events

Hot on the heels of my last post, announcing the short-term DocExplore exhibition and Harry Bloom Centenary display, we have some more exciting events to tell you about.

National Theatre display

National Theatre display (Templeman foyer)

Firstly, our third exhibition of the month, which joins in with the National Theatre’s 50th anniversary celebrations, is now on show. This small exhibition takes pride of place in the Templeman Library’s foyer, and contains gems from our collections which span the National’s life. Some of the highlights include the programme for the first production staged at the National, Hamlet, with Laurence Olivier as director, Chekov’s The Seagull, starring Judy Dench and Bill Nighy and materials relating to one of the National’s biggest successes, The History Boys. Do take a look if you get the chance, and tweet your thoughts to @UoKSpecialColls, using the hashtag #nt50.

Finding the funny posterI’m also delighted to announce that the new series of Special Collections & Archives and Cathedral Library lectures, will be opened by Pip Gregory on 26 November. Pip is in her second year of a PhD with the School of History, and is making intensive use of the British Cartoon Archive to examine humour in British and German cartoons of the First World War. On Tuesday 26, she will be sharing some of her discoveries and the challenges of studying humour when it comes to the First World War, in her talk: ‘Finding the Funny: humour in First World War cartoons’. There will be refreshments available from TR201 in the library from 5.30, with the talk starting at 6. The event will finish by 7.15, and we do hope to see you there.

Next on our radar is a celebration of pantomime, but I’ll let you know more about that as it occurs.

 

New exhibition: Picture this…re-view

We’re delighted to be able to join celebrations marking the first anniversary of the inspirational series ‘Picture this…’, a collaborative project between Canterbury Cathedral Library and the University’s own Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS).

The Picture this…re-view exhibition in the Templeman Library offers a second chance to explore the discoveries made by MEMS in the Cathedral Library, combined with examples of Special Collections’ own historical book collections. Included are some insights into early modern natural science, the nineteenth century answer to medieval Books of Hours and the craft of sixteenth century map making.

Pop into the Gallery to learn what this intriguing illustration is all about.

Pop into the Gallery to learn what this intriguing illustration is all about.

 

'The Parables of Our Lord' published to mimic a medieval book of hours

‘The Parables of Our Lord’ published to mimic a medieval book of hours

Picture this… brings experts from MEMS together with historical books from the Cathedral Library in writing workshops. The results of these workshops are then made available on the Cathedral Library’s website each month, offering new insight into the collections. The aim of the project has been to make items in the Cathedral Library more accessible to a wider audience and to provide an awareness of some of symbolism and meaning within the images, as well as their historical significance. This year, we’ve been treated to explorations of heroism, piety, superstition and artistic techniques from a range of materials including manuscripts, printed books and objects.

 

Pop into the Templeman Gallery (Level 1 East, just inside the cafe area) during Welcome Week to take a look at some of our treasures and to celebrate the success of the series!

Detail from 'The Parable of the Ten Virgins'.

Detail from ‘The Parable of the Ten Virgins’.

Items in the Cathedral Library and in Special Collections are available for researchers. If you would like to know more about accessing materials, please contact specialcollections@kent.ac.uk or library@canterbury-cathedral.org.

Picture This: one year on

It’s amazing what can happen in just a year (not to mention how quickly one year can go!) This summer marks to first anniversary of the highly successful ‘Picture This’ series of monthly features on the Canterbury Cathedral Library website, the fruit of a partnership between the Cathedral Library and students from the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies.

Picture thisTo celebrate this anniversary, there will be a half day symposium will be held at the Cathedral on Saturday the 17 August from 10am-1pm. During the symposium, an exhibition, including many of the items which featured in ‘Picture This’, will be launched. It will be open to the public from 19 – 30 August from 2-4pm. For more information about both of these events, and the series of features, take a look at the Cathedral’s webpages.

Over the past year, these brief features on the Cathedral’s webpages have informed, amused and stunned us with the wide variety and fascinating history of just a handful of rare books within the Cathedral Library’s collection. If you’ve been an avid follower of the series, you will know that they have taken in subjects as diverse as medieval heroism, early maps, scripture, Tudor prayer books and early modern frogs have all featured. If you’ve missed any of the posts, or would like to catch up on them, take a look at the full list of features.

We can’t wait to discover more in the next year of the series.