Mapping Medieval Chester

We’ve now finalised arrangements for another series of community workshops in Chester in December, including more text development workshops, a public presentation at St John’s Church, and an on-site workshop in which you can talk directly to the artist, Nayan Kulkarni, see the projection technology and even get involved in the production of some slides.

You can read more details of the events (and information about booking, where appropriate) here. There will be further activities in January, including a Photography Competition for local photographers to have a go at capturing the light installation – watch this space!

'Hryre' photo by David Heke

On Tuesday 15 November, Year 6 pupils at Newton Primary School worked with artist Nayan Kulkarni to produce illumination designs which were projected over the school building. This workshop and new art were inspired by ‘Hryre’ at St John’s Church, Chester, which projects fragments of text edited by the ‘Mapping Medieval Chester’ project across the ruins. The Newton Primary School artwork also explores the idea of writing with light. Pictures by Andy Scargill.

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For one night only! On Tuesday 15th November Newton Primary School will be illuminated by Year 6 artwork, produced under the direction of multimedia artist Nayan Kulkarni. This new art takes as its inspiration ‘Hryre’, the lighting installation at St John’s Church, Chester, which projects fragments of medieval text across the ruins.

You can read a press release about the event here and you can see a flyer advertising the event here.

Our public art project in Chester has already received coverage in the local media. You can see a recent newspaper story here.

I’ve been rather busy since my last post, and will be celebrating this Christmas with a newborn baby! Thank you to everyone who has been visiting our website, and for all your comments and feedback over the past year – we really value your interest in our research. In the words of the Chester Play of the Nativity:

Peace I bid king and knight

Men and women and each wight!

We’ve produced a giant (A0) poster which displays various aspects of our project research and gives a visual introduction to the questions of place and identity in the medieval city which we have explored. The poster is now well-travelled, having appeared at conferences in Wales, England and Canada (so far!). We realise it may be useful as a teaching aid or for research purposes, so it’s now available for download here. Please feel free to make use of it for any non-commercial purpose.

Some of the key research produced by the ‘Mapping Medieval Chester’ project team, as well as contributions by other leading scholars across a range of disciplines, will be collected in a volume which is forthcoming with University of Wales Press. Entitled Mapping the Medieval City: Space, Place and Identity in Chester c.1200-1600 and edited by Catherine A.M. Clarke, the book should appear early in 2011. It’s at the production stage now, with current discussion focusing on the choice of cover images etc. As soon as the volume is listed in the new UWP catalogue (and on their website), we’ll post details here. In the meantime, here’s an overview.

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I was in Chester on Friday; my first visit since MMC culminated with the festival on the August bank holiday weekend last year. I’ve had little time to work on Lucian recently, so it was exciting to be able to the return to the city he described so lovingly. What struck me, along with a crash of brightly-painted rhinos, was how my memory of the city’s topography and Lucian’s text  had distorted the reality of the city itself. My sense of the relative size of different buildings and areas was all wrong. (more…)

At the end of May, three members of the Mapping Medieval Chester project team attended a conference at the University of Toronto, Canada. This wonderful event combined an academic symposium with a performance experiment – this aimed to reconstruct the Chester Whitsun Plays as seen in 1572 by the Protestant preacher Christopher Goodman, who warned that their Catholic content presented ‘peril and danger to her majesty’ Queen Elizabeth I. In a special ‘Mapping Medieval Chester’ session, Catherine, Paul and Mark shared some of our project research on place and identity in late-medieval and early modern Chester. We also came away brimming with new ideas and questions. It was also very exciting to see how many people were already using the ‘Mapping Medieval Chester’ online resources and discussing our work.

Chester 2010: The Creation and Fall of Man

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Following some questions on this Blog about the Minstrels’ Court event in Chester this year, you can find details about the day in this flyer and timetable. The event will be on Saturday 26 June. Thanks to the Grosvenor Museum for this information!