KNIT A SONG OF SHEPHERDS
What to expect: This workshop speaks to the farmers’ smocks in the collection of the MERL. Participants will work a small square of smocking stitch in Herdwick wool yarn grown on Fornside Farm in the Lake District. Thoughts on the wool, its texture, and its relationship to the working Lakeland landscape will be recorded along […]
THE MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY FARMING: PROPOSALS
What would you put in a Museum of Contemporary Farming? At this event, we ask ‘What would you put in a Museum of Contemporary Farming?’ Invited guests will present ideas – however impossible, imaginary or boring – and it is up to you, the audience, to decide whether they should be included in the Museum. […]
THE PIG PARK AND OTHER EXPERIMENTS
What makes a good life…for a pig? Andrea Roe’s recent artworks focus on pigs and their behaviour. They are the result of working at Scotland’s Rural College, where she explored the nature of animal consciousness. In CARNEVALE: Objects Designed for Pigs, Andrea collaborated with artist Cath Keay to create play objects which might appeal to both humans […]
BELONGING
Belonging is a multi-site exhibition curated by final-year Museum Studies students Do you belong? As social animals we feel compelled to seek out the company of others. We place ourselves into groups and categories. We define our identities by how similar or different we are to other people. Yet sometimes belonging can lead to exclusion. […]
VIBRANT LOCALISM: THE STORY OF COMMON GROUND – JOS SMITH
22 March. Dr. Jos Smith, ‘Vibrant Localism: The Story of Common Ground’ Jos will introduce the work of Common Ground and plot their emergence from the environmental activism of the 1970s. He will also explore their particular relationship to rural England in which the idea of the local found itself re-energised in subtle but political […]
CANCELLED: Radical tours and rustic harangues: William Cobbett and John Thelwell – James Grande
CANCELLED – 1 March: James Grande, ‘Radical tours and rustic harangues: William Cobbett and John Thelwell’ This talk will explore the radical tradition of rural writing through the work of two Romantic period polemicists, William Cobbett and John Thelwall. It will focus on their tours, principally Rural Rides (1830) and The Peripatetic (1793), as well as their agricultural experiments, political […]
John Clare and Place: Simon Kövesi
15 February: Simon Kövesi, ‘John Clare and Place’ The Romantic-period peasant poet John Clare is increasingly regarded as English literature’s first major ecologically-conscious writer. This appreciation is built upon a idea that Clare is committed to a specific locality, a tight rural environment, and that his identification with his village of Helpston in Cambridgeshire was comprehensive and […]
THE WILD OTHER: ON LANDSCAPE AND GRIEF – Clover Stroud
18 January: Clover Stroud, ‘The Wild Other: On Landscape and Grief’ At this reading Clover will read extracts from The Wild Other, her confessional memoir about the role horses and the landscape of Oxfordshire have played in managing trauma in her life. She will talk about the riding accident, and subsequent profound brain damage, that her […]
EXTENDED HOURS: MARCH – CANCELLED
The Extended Hours Night is cancelled due to snowy conditions. The Anatomy for Artists seminar will be rescheduled. Thursday 1st March Not enough hours in the day? We’re open late on the last Thursday of every month*, so you can visit the reading room, museum galleries, shop, cafe and garden until 9pm. There are usually […]
NOVEMBER LATE OPENING NIGHT
We’re open late on the last Thursday of every month*, so you can visit the museum galleries, shop, cafe and garden until 9pm. There are usually additional activities taking place on our late opening nights to add to your visit. Thursday 28th November Enjoy an after-hours visit and a bit of stress-free Christmas shopping in our […]