CRIME.PHOTO.NOVEL: The Power of the Book Exhibition

Fri 1 April – Sat 30 April

Heritage Quay is honoured to be hosting a temporary exhibition “Crime.Photo.Novel: The Power of the Book by Katrina Whitehead.

Murder mysteries have always been considered to have a wide appeal, but where did it all start? This exhibition displays seminal books which help us to understand how crime novels first became popular from the exploration of creative non-fiction from authors Edgar Allan Poe and Truman Capote, to a selection of fiction and non-fiction crime novels which use photography.

An online event exploring the ideas behind the exhibiton is taking place on Tuesday 26 April

Presentation and Q&A with Katrina Whitehead, Lecturer in Photography and Creative Writing, Dr Helen Gavin, Subject Lead in Psychology and Dr Merrick Burrow, Head of English & Creative Writing

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/crimephotonovel-the-power-of-the-book-tickets-314546335557

We’re hiring!

Heritage Quay has an exciting new job opportunity: Public Engagement Assistant.

This brand new role will help us share our amazing collections with staff, students and the general public in person and online.Working with the Public Engagement Officer we need someone to create events, workshops and exhibitions for students and the public, as well as being the first point of contact for customers using our award-winning spaces. The job is 30 hours a week until the end of 2024.

We’re looking for someone with great customer service and serious social media skills – but you don’t need a qualification in archives. If you think this might be you, please visit the University job page for more information: https://vacancies.hud.ac.uk/tlive_webrecruitment/wrd/run/ETREC107GF.open?VACANCY_ID=6899118CNy&WVID=3887655noN&LANG=USA

Heritage Quay’s Lonely Hearts Club

Welcome to the Heritage Quay Lonely Hearts Club!

Here you can find information about some of the collections that are rarely seen in our Research Room that are just waiting for someone to fall in love with them.

These special collections can be big or small, they just haven’t been used as much as we know they deserve.

So if you’re looking for new sources or fresh perspectives, this is the place…

Robert Blatchford Collection

Robert Blatchford was a key part of the Victorian and Edwardian socialist movement in. Despite the influence of his social network, and his newspaper The Clarion, his name is not as well known as many others. Whilst his friends and co-campaigners for social justice and suffrage rightly feature in histories of the period, we think that Robert’s place is important too as an ally and organiser to ignore.

Blatchford’s story is intertwined with the birth of the socialist movement, and his thoughts and life experiences can help us unpick the ideas and concepts of the broader Labour movement, of which he was not a devoted member. As the modern Labour Party tussles with what kind of party it wants to be, and how it expresses national pride and interational cooperation at the same time, there is much to glean from Robert Blatchford’s experiences and writings.

This small collection is only 3 boxes, but they are full of handwritten and published copies of his poems, articles and other writings. It also includes a large amount of correspondence written by Blatchford to his daughters, his personal accounts, records of his war service, newspaper cuttings and scrapbooks of his career.

The collection came to us from Lord David Clark, and of course contains material about Victor Grayson.

You can browse at the catalogue here www.heritagequay.org/archives/BLA and then of course you should book to come and take a look yourself.

We invite you to solve the clues, follow the trail and conquer the Heritage Quay scavenger hunt

It’s easy to become lost in the labyrinth that is an archive catalogue so we’re going to give you a series of clues to follow. Each clue will lead you to a place in the catalogue which will have a letter hidden somewhere within it, and the clue to the next location. You’ll need to collect all eight letters by the end of the hunt to reveal the password to a special webpage.

Some of the clues are hard and you might need to spend some time thinking about them or ask for help. If you’re really stuck you can ask us for a hint on our social media channels @heritage_quay.

Before you start, you’ll need to know a little bit about how an archive catalogue works. Here’s an example of what an entry looks like

RFL/HR/1/1/1

This is called a Reference Number. All you need to know at the moment is that ‘RFL’ is the code we’ve given to the Collection, HR is a section of that Collection (in this case, things about staff and managing people) and the three numbers are sub-sections which get more specific as you go along. The last number is usually an individual item or a few items. It can help to visualise it like a tree.

Why not check out the entry to see what it looks like in real life https://heritagequay.org/archives/rfl/hr/1/1/1/. Clicking on the text above the title of the item will move you up the tree.

Don’t worry too much about the rest, we’ll help you along the way as you do the hunt

Click here for Clue 1

Before you start, make sure you’ve read our Scavengers Hunt instructions
All good to go? Then read on!

Clue 1

Let’s start with an easy one. Put www.heritagequay.org/archives into your browser. On a desktop computer you should see a search panel on the left and a list of archive collections on the right. On mobiles and tablets the layout may vary.

Scroll through the archive collections (remember to check more than the first page but you don’t need to go too far!) until you find one that matches the following clue, and click on it:

My title is national, my content is musical and I’m full of scores and recordings

You’re now inside that collection. There are two things to spot.

1) It now says the collection name in the search panel under the Reference Number. This means that any searches you do in the other boxes, (like adding a date) will only search in that collection.

2) The right hand side shows the different sections of the collection.

We’re looking for a musical score (the section code for this is SC) whose title is a Greek mythical story about a long journey

Keeping the collection code in the Reference Number field, type the name of the story into ‘Title or Description contains’ and press go. You should get 6 results.

The score you’re looking for is just for singers

Click on the one you think it is to see if you’re right. There should be a letter in the description (keep a note of it) and the next clue attached as an image. If you can’t see these, you’re not in the right place yet. If you can see the letter but the the image isn’t loading – get in touch and let us know!

Hey Heritage Quay! Where’s your COVID Mass Observation archive?

Across the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) sector, there was a rush of calls in March and April asking for participants for mass observation-style projects, aiming to capture the everyday experiences of COVID-19. Subsequently, there has been a series of projects looking to document the Black Lives Matter 2020 protests. There’s a lot going on this year, and GLAM people want to make sure it’s documented for future researchers.

At Heritage Quay we seriously discussed the idea of doing a COVID project ourselves, asking for submissions from the general public in the form of diaries, audio visual materials etc but decided not to. We realised our efforts were better spent on making sure that our organisation, the University of Huddersfield, is documenting its approach to this unprecedented crisis, but that’s it for now. One of the things that we took into account was the multitude of other projects out there, which I’ve listed below. These were repositories better set up to take in and process the contributions, and were often more relevant for communities. We would just be adding more noise into the mix.

We are considering setting up activities for staff and students at the University to contribute when campus has reopened, which would be more about processing through creative activity or conversation with the option of donating afterwards. For us, this feels like the right approach.

Some recent writing has raised interesting questions about this impulse of cultural institutions to collect in times of crisis and how much they exploit people’s grief (read this link). We’d love to know your thoughts on this.

On balance we don’t consider these projects, which are asking people to share their potential trauma, to be exploitative, if they are done right but we are aware that that can be a tricky line to tread. If you are creating a document of your experience at home, and are thinking of donating it somewhere, check out national and local projects and find the one that feels right to you.

As always, stay safe, and we hope to see you at Heritage Quay soon

Some projects for you to consider:

CoronaDiary at University of Swansea (link)

Lockdown Diaries at Lambeth Archives  (link)

Covid Diaries in Leeds (link)

Community, Covid & You at the Open University (link)

OVID-19 Diaries for Salisbury at Salisbury Museum (link)

West Yorkshire Archive Service  (link)

COVID-19 Pandemic Project at FACHRS (link)

West Sussex Archives (link)

And of course, the 12th May MO project at the University of Sussex did this over one whole day (link)

As part of our series of Heritage Quay at Home activity packs today we’re exploring the theme of Tell it!

This theme is all about creating and sharing stories, which is ideal for any budding curators and writers. Archives are full of stories waiting to be discovered and can also inspire new stories.

Who am I?

Whose is this?

Location, Location, Location

You can also have a go at curate your own exhibition with our handy how-to guide

If you want to share your stories with us, post them on our social media with #HQatHome and tag us in @Heritage_Quay

Our final theme in our series of Heritage Quay at Home activity packs is Discover it!

This theme is all about sharpening those research skills and playing detective.

Why not have a go at making a historic map featuring your home or school? Download our how-to guide to find out what to do

Something else you can do at home is look out for the pests that can damage archive collections.

Pests!

Download this sheet first, then the ones below to create your activity pack

The images of the pests can be downloaded here and the labels here

and answers here

Educational Resources

We also have a range of educational packs with videos, which you can find at the mylearning.org website.