Lectures

Summary of current events



Art behind bars

Wed 10th April 2024

10:30 am and 12:30 pm

By: Angela Findlay

Years of working as an artist within the Criminal Justice System in England and Germany has given Angela unique insights into the destructive and costly cycle of crime, prisons and re-offending. In this thought-provoking talk she offers a deeper understanding of the minds, lives and challenges of offenders. With extraordinary slides of art projects and prisoner’s art, she demonstrates how within the process of creating art of any discipline, there are vital opportunities for offenders to confront their crimes and develop the key life skills so essential in leading a positive and productive life. A frequent response to this talk has been “I had no idea!” and indeed it casts light onto areas of our society where the Arts not only are visual, decorative or commercial, but absolutely vital, hugely relevant and potentially life-changing.

This talk is moving, informative and very original, and interspersed with personal accounts of humorous or slightly horrifying situations,

Angela Findlay is a professional artist, writer and freelance lecturer with a long career of teaching art in prisons in Germany and England. Her time ‘behind bars’ and later as Arts Coordinator of the London-based Koestler Arts, gave her many insights into the huge impact the arts can have in terms of rehabilitation. Though novel, her ideas were effective and in 2016 she was invited by the Ministry of Justice to support the case for the arts to be included in new, progressive programmes of rehabilitation and education. Brexit unfortunately reversed the direction of prison policy but art's role is still vital. 

Angela has a BA(Hons) in Fine Art, a Diploma in Artistic Therapy (specialising in colour) and her paintings have been widely exhibited. In the past decade Angela’s Anglo-German roots led her to research Germany’s largely unknown post-WW2 process of remembrance and the extraordinary culture of 'counter memorials' and site-specific artworks that emerged to express national shame and apology. Her book, In My Grandfather's Shadow, was published in 2022.

 

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The Model and the Muse in 19th Century Art

Wed 8th May 2024

10:30 am and 12:30 pm

By: Daphne Lawson

In discussing famous artists of the nineteenth century, the model central to their work is frequently overlooked. This lecture explores the myths of the Impressionists’ models in France and the Pre-Raphaelite muses in England. Some of them were artists in their own right, overshadowed by the men who painted them, and others never really overcame their lowly status as an artist’s model in the hierarchy of the art world. We begin with Victorine Meurent, the model for Manet’s Olympia and Van Gogh’s paintings of his mistress Sien and Madame Roulin in Arles and also Degas’s sculpture of Marie Van Goetham, better known as The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years.

Daphne Lawson has an MA by REsearch and Thesis from the University of Canterbury on Degas' Public and Private Spectacle, and a BA in Art History from London University.  Her first career was as an actress, following this, until retirement, she taught courses on French Impressionism,European Romanticism and Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Murder most florid

Wed 12th June 2024

10:30 am and 12:30 pm

By: Mark Spencer

Plants too are silent witnesses to crimes. Their presence in many crime scenes can help an investigator identify a suspect or locate a victim. Apparently mundane plants such as brambles and nettles can provide valuable insights into when a crime was committed. Fragments of leaves and seeds embedded in soil on the footwear of a suspect can place them at the scene. An understanding of landscape history and land-use helps an investigator discriminate between a clandestine burial and a mediaeval feature in a woodland. Forensic botany is not new science, plants have played a role in solving major cases for decades, including the infamous murder of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s infant son.

 Mark Spencer has been fascinated by plants since a small boy. He studied horticulture at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He also studied botany and mycology at university, and then worked as a field botanist for a regional conservation organisation. After 12 years as a senior botany curator at the Natural History Museum, London he is now a consultant forensic botanist, public speaker and occasional radio and TV presenter. He is the honorary curator of Carl Linnaeus’s herbarium at the Linnean Society of London, one of the most significant collections in the history of science. He has a strong interest in the history of botany and botanic gardens, invasive non-native species and the flora of North-West Europe.

Murder most florid