UCL English Department Hosts ‘Bloomsbury Day 2010’.
'Bloomsbury Day' will be Held Friday 12 March from 4pm to 8.30pm.
‘Bloomsbury Past and Present’
The first half will be devoted to 19th-century Bloomsbury
- There will be demonstrations, short talks, and round-table discussion with audience q&a chaired by Rosemary Ashton, leader of the UCL Bloomsbury Project studying reform in 19th-century Bloomsbury
- There will be a demonstration of the Project website, which includes maps, streets, squares, and progressive institutions – educational, social, religious – established in 19th-century Bloomsbury
- There will be a demonstration of the Bloomsbury blog, a family history site run by Dr Carole Reeves, Outreach Historian responsible for Public Engagement at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine
- There will also be short talks by experts in different disciplines connected to the Project – literature and journalism, architectural history, urban geography, history of the occult
- During the tea interval participants will be able to see items from UCL Library’s Bloomsbury Exhibition and to access the Bloomsbury Project’s website
The second half will be devoted to ‘Literary Bloomsbury’
- There will be short talks by novelists and writers with close connections to UCL about the significance of Bloomsbury for their writing, among them Lynne Truss and David Lodge
- There will be a discussion chaired by John Sutherland
- There will be readings of poems composed in and/or about Bloomsbury by recent English Department alumni Oli Hazzard and Declan Ryan, and by Professor Mark Ford
The chosen theme of Bloomsbury past and present will bring people together from a wide range of activities and occupations, all with an interest in Bloomsbury
The audience will be drawn from UCL alumni, local Bloomsbury organisations and interest groups, from the British Museum to the Mary Ward Centre, the Dr Williams’s Library, the Swedenborg Society, and local interest groups such as the Bloomsbury Association, Cultural Bloomsbury, the Camden History Society, the Marchmont Association, Hidden Cities, individual local historians and residents, representatives from local hospitals (including UCH and Great Ormond Street), charitable organisations including Coram’s Fields, the Artworkers Guild, schools, museums and galleries (including the Foundling Museum)
The aim is to widen people’s perspectives about Bloomsbury past and present by:
- attracting a wider audience than usually comes to UCL events
- bringing the general audience together with writers and historians
- showcasing the 19th-century Bloomsbury Project by demonstrating the website, explaining the significance of the website as a resource for scholars and amateurs with an interest in historic Bloomsbury, demonstrating the rich archives and resources of Bloomsbury’s institutions, and encouraging scholars, students, local and family historians to exploit these often under-used resources by giving them the information they need to pursue their own researches
- celebrating and raising the profile locally of UCL itself, by showing it as central to the distinguished history of Bloomsbury, by advertising the riches of its archives, and by spreading knowledge of UCL’s current initiatives
For more information, contact Clare Szembek, English Department, UCL by writing to English-office@ucl.ac.uk.
