Rebuilding Marvell’s Hull with Minecraft

The Hull History Centre will be Rebuilding Marvell’s Hull with Minecraft, as part of Being Human 2015, the UK’s only national festival of the humanities. This will combine Dr Stewart Mottram’s research into Andrew Marvell and 17th-century Hull with the History Centre’s ongoing use of the popular video game Minecraft to help bring history alive for younger audiences. 

Following a successful application, Hull History Centre has been awarded funding to hold the event during the festival week, 12–22 November. The Rebuilding Marvell’s Hull with Minecraft event will champion the excellence of humanities research being undertaken in Yorkshire and help to demonstrate the vitality and relevance of this today. Forty-one grants have been awarded to universities and cultural organisations across the UK to participate in the festival.

Being Human pocket preview, badge and sticker on Hollar's map of Hull -
this will be a key source for the Minecrafters 

The grant will help the Hull History Centre bring together researchers and local communities to engage with the humanities. The event will be part of an 11 day national programme of big ideas, big debates and engaging activities for all ages. The festival will inform, extend and ignite contemporary thinking and imagination around the humanities. 

Minecraft experts will be on-hand to help participants build four key landmarks from Andrew Marvell’s Hull – Beverley Gate, Holy Trinity Church, Hull Grammar School and the Hull Charterhouse – using plans, maps, and other historical material in the History Centre’s collections to help visualise the appearance of the buildings around the time of the English Civil War. The completed buildings will be showcased on the HullCraft website.

The event has been made possible by a grant from the festival organisers, the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Now in its second year, BeingHuman is supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the British Academy (BA) with support from the Wellcome Trust.

Dr Stewart Mottram at the University of Hull said “Minecraft offers an exciting opportunity to engage new audiences with my research into Andrew Marvell and 17th-century Hull, for these landmarks to be built in Minecraft but informed by history is fantastic”.

The 2015 festival programme promises to be exciting, entertaining and thought-provoking, with something for everyone in our diverse communities.