IMAGINING HISTORY SUMMER SCHOOL
Throughout July | Online | FREE
In 2020 we set up Times Shifting – turning the historical moment of the lockdowns across the world into history-in-the-making and invited young writers to speculate about how the world might change as a result. In 2021 – we broadened the programme to include online encounters with art historians, specialist librarians and radical historians. This year we continue our programme of online tasking, writing, exchanging and shake-up thinking.
During the month of July, you can choose one of three specially designed workshops based around weekly online sessions during which members of the IHUK team set you a series of writing, thought and exploration tasks.
The aim is to introduce you to a way of immersing yourself in the historical ‘environment’ in a way that draws stories to you, and develops your writing skills to deal with what you find. Although online, we bounce you out physically into your historical environment to begin to make your own idiosyncratic choices in research, story development and writing.
Our 2022 projects are:
Boughton Journey – exploring the lives that are wrapped up in and around the extraordinary 17th century country house at Boughton near Kettering – a house containing one of the most extensive art collections of any house of its kind. Learning how to decode works of art from other eras in history, gives you rich sources of inspirational material that take your thinking in ways you might not initially have predicted.
The Lure and Lore of the Sea – delving into the stories contained in Trinity House of Leith, a charity institute established in the 16th century to support mariners. The maritime community of Leith was the departure and arrival place of those who made their lives on the sea – whalers, merchants, adventurers, warriors, stowaways, fugitives, pirates….. Trinity House contains traces of the history of the dependence of these islands of ours on the sea with all its excitements and terrors.
Falling Statues – no one can deny that in recent years we have experienced a rapid series of historical turning points. Just a couple of years ago, the world was a very different place and who knows how it will continue to change. Guided by a historian of the modern world and a writer/journalist/researcher, you will explore how the moving wheels of history affect lives, and by so doing, affect your writing in unexpected ways. Your stories grow out of the huge tapestry of the world.
For two months, you will be given special access to the unique Adam Matthews digital archive library – millions of documents that will support your writer’s mind on its expeditions.
During IHUK2022, you will hot-house your individual voice, technique, direction and ‘edge’ in your Historical Fiction writing. Your writing is the gateway to a future of new thinking. And here’s the thing! – you don’t have to be a Historical Fiction writer right now. But we can assure that by the end of the programme you will be!
Check out www.imagininghistory.org for more details about who we are and what we do.
If you are interested in joining IHUK2022, send us an email us telling us:
- Who you are?
- What drives your creative mind?
- Which project you would like to be involved in?
ImaginingHistoryUK@outlook.com – and put IHUK2022 in the subject line with your name
