Embedded Files
7 February, 2023
Emily Baldwin
Last summer, Bertz Associates practitioners Iris Bertz, Aneeka Shezad, Ava-Daniera McDonald, Emily Baldwin and graphic designer Sharonjiit Sutton embarked on a new partnership between the Shakespeare Memorial Library and the young people of Small Heath as part of the Everything to Everybody Project. The project, which began in January 2020, seeks to empower the citizens of Birmingham to engage with the wealth of resources held within the Shakespeare Memorial Library.
The Shakespeare Memorial library is an asset belonging to the Birmingham people. Established in 1864, it was the first public Shakespeare Library in the world and was uniquely curated by radical Birmingham preacher and lecturer George Dawson to make cultural participation accessible to the masses. It was here that his ‘everything to everybody’ ethos was created. The collection of materials related to Shakespeare held by the library is vast and diverse, ranging from newspaper clippings and production photographs to rare books and even one of the only First Folios in the world, all in 97 different languages!
Photo Credit: Olly Romf
The project aims to revive the collections founding principle that culture should be actively owned by everybody, whilst encouraging local communities to explore, interrogate and improve the collection for future generations. To do this, we collaborated with 15 students from The Ark Academy school in Small Heath so that we could hear their thoughts on this often-overlooked resource.
We began on a bright spring morning by visiting the library. We met with Lauren Jansen-Parkes and Lucy Kamenova and travelled to the top of the library into the Shakespeare memorial room. Despite many of the students living in Birmingham for their whole life, only a handful had visited the Shakespeare library before. Inside, the dark wood bookcases, engraved archway and exciting resources sparked lots of questions - where are all the other resources kept? Have other students been here before? How can we add to the collection? Many of our questions were answered shortly after, as Lucy and Lauren led an informative session about the collection and we got to engage with some of the archival material. There were scripts in different languages, including Urdu and French, posters from productions that had been held in Birmingham in the past and some exciting scrapbooks of Shakespearean work created by a long-forgotten family. By the end of the session we were full of motivation and interested in discussing how we could put our diverse, multigenerational stamp on the archive.
We returned to the classroom to organise our ideas and begin creating our resource. We were inspired by the posters that we saw in different languages to highlight all of the different languages spoken within our school community. We were also interested in sharing the engaging items and fun facts that we learnt in our session. We discussed how best to represent our interests to our generation and settled on creating a digital scrapbook and a paper language chain which would facilitate conversations and participation amongst the local community.
Photo Credit: Olly Romf
We presented the work at the end of the academic year at the Ark Academy Summer Fete. We asked visitors to write the languages they spoke onto a paper chain and we used this chain to decorate our table. The table was decked out with Shakespeare quizzes, scrapbook sheets and posters that we created in class. We encouraged members of the community to go to the Shakespeare Memorial library and to think about what Shakespeare meant to them. We spoke about school plays and English lessons and trips to the theatre and films. It was interesting to see how people related Shakespeare to their daily life and culture.
Through weekly sessions, a trip to the library and creative arts activities our young people were inspired by the project's ethos to create a brand new resource to be held in the Shakespeare collection for years to come. We presented our work to the library in November 2022 by delivering an engaging presentation and revisiting the archival materials which we consulted in our first trip. Our final visit to the library allowed us to celebrate our work and provide feedback to the staff, ensuring that our contribution could be archived and utilised by future teachers and students.
Photo Credit: Olly Romf
The hard work, commitment and passion of the Ark Explorers is summarised by Everything To Everybody’s senior collection and engagement assistant Lucy Kamenova, who worked with us throughout the project:
“I really enjoyed the visits from the school children. It was a pleasure to share the history of the Shakespeare collection in Birmingham with them and items from the archive. I was impressed by how much interest they had to discover more about the collection and how much they have learned about it and the library as a whole. I really enjoyed their presentation, the language chain and the quiz they created."
We, on the project, also learned from the experience. You helped us understand what works for the school visit activities we deliver. We will take all the points raised in your feedback into our project’s future educational delivery. We will use your quiz with other school children and add the scrapbook to the collection!
To all children from the Ark Explorers, well done for your work, the presentation and the quiz. I am surprised how much you took from just one session! Keep your curiosity alive and continue reading. Remember, the library has story books for all ages and every subject you are interested in.”
Bertz Associates’s Iris Bertz echoed Lucy’s comments: "The children from Ark Academy engaged deeply with the Shakespeare Library Project and understood themselves as co-constructors of learning & creating. The E2E team and also the lead teacher Heidi Turner seriously engaged in the co-constructive approach, which showed in the young people's engagement."
Photo Credit: Olly Romf
We hope to extend this work further in the new year by bringing the library resources and the commitment to diversity and inclusion championed by the Ark Explorers to more Birmingham schools. In the meantime, you can access the Ark Explorer’s presentation here.
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