Dear list members,
'Colonial Countryside: English Country Houses Reinterpreted' is a child-led history and writing project led by Corinne Fowler at the University of Leicester. The project assembles primary pupils, writers and historians to explore country houses' Caribbean and East India Company connections. The project will commission, resource and publish new writing. The first phase is being crowd-funded to demonstrate that this project is wanted and needed. The BBC will be making a short film about it to help raise funds to take as many children through the process as we can. The crowd-funding link is here: http://goo.gl/LJTnVU.
In the second phase, 100 primary pupils will visit 10 local country houses. They explore the archives with an historian and work with a writer to produce pithy personal essays which will be communicated to live, print and digital audiences. Peepal Tree Press will also commission 10 high-profile writers to produce new creative work about each of the 10 participating houses. The books will be sold in the bookshops of those houses. The children will be trained to think of themselves as leaders and advocates for the English countryside's black history. They will attend a conference with panels and keynotes but where only children speak. There will be a child-only advisory board and children will co-produce exhibitions, a massive online open course and they will participate in the training of heritage professionals.
For more information, contact Dr Corinne Fowler ([log in to unmask])
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