Professor Sri-Kartini Leet has been appointed as commissioned artist for Amersham Museum, as part of a three-year partnership between Essex Cultural Diversity Project and Farnham Maltings, funded by the Rothschild Foundation. The commission aims to work with adults aged 30 and under, to creatively capture and present recollections and stories about Amersham from a diverse range of local people who have been born since the museum opened in 1991. Further details can be found on the Amersham Museum website.

Led by the Chiltern Conservation Board, the Chalk, Cherries and Chairs landscape partnership is funded by Heritage Lottery Funding. As part of this scheme, Dr Helena Chance is leading the “Woodlanders Lives and Landscapes.” project at BNU. 

The Chilterns, regarded in popular imagination as a beautiful landscape of beechwoods, chalk escarpments and picturesque villages, was for more than two centuries, a unique industrial landscape. Nowhere else in the nation could be found the combined industries of chair-making and straw-plaiting, dependent on the plentiful beech-woods and the thin wheat straw that grew on the chalk downlands. The woods and villages were alive with industrial endeavour in furniture-making, woodware, straw-plaiting, lace-making and tambour-beading (the technique of applying beading and sequins for the fashion industry). 

Much is already known about the working lives and these rural communities, and the artefacts they produced, but less is known about their domestic and social lives, particularly those of women and children. The LPS Chalk, Cherries and Chairs survey revealed that 54% of respondents expressed interest in knowing more about the social and cultural history of the area and that 14% would be willing to volunteer to find out more about the woodland wood-turners (bodgers) and their families. The Woodlanders’ Lives and Landscapes project will enable volunteers to discover how those industries connected through the family lives and stories over the last 150 years. The project will capture memories to understand more about domestic and social lives, homes and gardens, networks, social and sporting activities, health, politics, experiences of war, dialects, traditions, songs, games, food, clothes, religion and education.

The project will discover how these people’s lives and work shaped the landscape we see today and how the landscape shaped them. Early outcomes from the project underpinned a REF2021 impact case study.

Further details and project updates can be found on the project website. The latest project newsletter is also now available.

Rituals Reconstructed is a collaborative project working with film, performance, installation and storytelling to explore the ways in which Jewish people who identify as LGBTQI engage in religious and community life. The project was led by Professor Margaret Greenfields, in partnership with Liberal Judaism, the University of Portsmouth and the University of Coventry.

The initial project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council completed in 2015 and has been followed by a number of dissemination events, including the Rainbow Pilgrim events in 2018 funded by the National Lottery fund. Further details are available on the Rituals Reconstructed project website. Details of publications from the project can be found on Research Council UK’s Gateway to Research and the research underpinned a REF2021 impact case study.

BNU has a long track record of research into the health and social care needs, wellbeing and education of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, with research led by visiting Professor Margaret Greenfields and Dr Carol Rogers.

The European Academic Network on Romani Studies supported two thematic meetings in 2014 which resulted in publication of two policy reports in 2015, for health and social care and for crime and punishment. This research has led to parliamentary debates on the health of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, in partnership with the Traveller movement and led to a REF2021 impact case study.

Wider research undertaken at BNU has led to the Gypsy, Traveller, Roma, Showmen and Boater (GTRSB) Pledges.