Navigating history
By Rob Illingworth- Local Studies Development Librarian, KCC Libraries
& Archives
As Local Studies Development Librarian for KCC Libraries
& Archives I am keen that staff and customers make full and
imaginative use of our rich collection resources. In Folkestone
Library I was involved in the Navigating History Project. This was
conceived by Proboscis, a creative facilitation organisation, and
curator Deborah Smith. The project aimed to find new routes into local
history collections through a series of special commissions from
practitioners in the fields of art, design, jewellery, film and
interactive technology. The Navigating History project also
encompassed a series of talks, performances and educational workshops.
The three sites for the project were Folkestone Library, Museum and
Gallery, East Sussex Record Office in Lewes and the West Sussex Local
Studies Collection in Worthing Library.
At Folkestone, three artists were commissioned to produce unique
artworks in response to items in the Library & Museum collections.
I led extensive building tours during which the artists had a chance
to delve through drawers, press buttons, open cabinets, sift boxes and
ask many questions. In response, I tried to develop their interests
with further presentations of material. By the end of their visits,
the artists would be sitting at the study tables immersed in files and
artefacts, alive to the creative possibilities of local history
collections.
The filmmaker Stephen Connolly produced an 18 minute film which
juxtaposed the story of Folkestone's first Camera Obscura with the
observations of today's Folkestonians. The artist Rob Kesseler drew on
microscopic images of botanical museum specimens to produce beautiful
images for window transfers, monthly bookmarks and the special
Botanizing the
Library publication. Inspired by satirical Election posters, Bob
& Roberta Smith launched a whimsical campaign for more Art in
Folkestone. The campaign culminated in an afternoon of games,
experiments and competitions for a packed crowd on Folkestone beach.
Collaboration between the artists, library & museum staff, arts
officers, CSV Lending Time volunteers, the Folkestone Library User
Group and library customers was an essential part of the commissions.
The project took place in October & November 2004, but there
has been an impressive level of ensuing and related activities. After
viewing the film in Folkestone Museum, Leonard Montgomery, a 3rd year
architecture student at the University of Greenwich, has been
designing a modern day camera obscura which he hopes to exhibit in
Folkestone.
Stephen Connolly has a new commission. Folkestone itself, a place
in transition, is the focus of Passage, an exhibition at the Metropole
Galleries in June 2005 by Stephen Connolly and Nilu Izadi. Using the
most simple of image making devices - pinhole cameras and camera
obscura - the artists will address a place on the threshold of change.
Stephen will feature a recut version of the Folkestone Obscura film in
Gallery 2.
Rob Kesseler is also about to complete a commission that will make
a monumental impact in the district. Flora Calcarea is a collection of
artworks created for the Chalk & Channel Way cycle route between
Dover and Folkestone. The artist presents us with a fossilised book of
dried flowers from which the pages have escaped, blown along the path,
accompanied by highly magnified pollen specimens collected from local
flowers and photographed on a scanning electron microscope at Kew.
Rubbings can be taken from the relief bronzes and built up into a
personal collection.
Meanwhile, Navigating History has been selected as
a case study for a new arts council book on exemplary projects.
For further information & details of project
partners see www.navigating-history.net
The Ullyetts - father or son? -
As a result of
reading the article entitled "Arnold Henry Ullyett Son of Henry
Ullyett B Sc" which was published in the Spring Sandgate News Rob
Illingworth and Ros McCarthy discussed her findings and Rob has
promised to place copies of her article in the Folkestone Library
files for the Ullyetts and the 'Navigating History' project - so that
Arnold and Henry do not get confused with each other in future.