Welcome to 2017 at Hull History Centre!

It’s finally here, Hull is City of Culture 2017! As we all return to work today, we thought we would take the opportunity to wish everyone a happy and culture-filled new year. And welcome back to the 2017 History Centre blog.

This year, in addition to the posts from our Transforming Archives trainees, there will be posts themed to tie-in with the City of Culture programming. Throughout the year, events will be planned in line with four different strands: January to March highlights all things ‘Made in Hull’; April to June sees the city explore ‘Roots and Routes’; July to September has the city celebrating ‘Freedom’; and October to December rounds off the year with ‘Tell the World’.

A new History Centre blog post will appear on a regular basis (hopefully every second Monday). We will be taking inspiration from the archives to tell unknown tales and to highlight historical happenings from new and interesting angles. So keep an eye out, you might discover something you never knew about our city and its people!

One of our readers discovering lots of interesting stories!

To start us off, this blog is going to introduce you to our ‘Made in Hull’ theme, as well as some of our upcoming events.

Over the coming weeks you will learn about the making of our city, its origins, foundation and the rights afforded to its citizens. You will find out about the individuals who have been born in Hull, and those whose experiences of living here have helped form their character and work. You will also discover little-known stories of our manufacturing industries and the workers that made them successful.

You might also be interested to know that we will be showcasing an exhibition of Hull’s royal charters, rarely seen in the flesh (google ‘velum’ and ‘parchment’ to understand the ‘flesh’ reference…)! The exhibition will run from 3rd January to 24th February 2017 and entrance is completely free.

A sneak preview of our 'Making of Hull: Our Charters' Exhibition

At the end of January, there will be a mini-exhibition at the University of Hull’s newly revamped Middleton Hall. The exhibition is in support of a retrospective on the life of Anthony Minghella which is being organised by the University. It will also mark the launch of the Anthony Minghella Archive [Ref U DTM] here at the History Centre. This will be the first time his papers have been made accessible to the public.

Our long-running Lunchtime Club lectures will start up again on 10th January with a talk by our very own Martin Taylor on ‘Hull Charters’. On 14th February we will be joined by David Neave who will be speaking on ‘The Makers of the Edwardian City – Sir Alfred Gelder and Joseph Hirst’. Will May shall be rounding off the ‘Made in Hull’ talks on 14th March with his talk ‘Stevie Smith: Hull’s Forgotten Poet’.

Lunchtime lecture in full swing!

Our ‘History Makers’ events will be back on 7th January with an exploration of ‘Medieval Hull’. We will be unwrapping our sweet and chocolatey heritage on 4th February with the ‘Needlers Unwrapped’ event. We will be jumping through a ‘Magic Door’ to the past with the work of Dan Billany on 4th March.

Last but not least, whilst we say goodbye to our History Bakers series from 2016, it will be replaced with something new and a bit different. Still on the ‘Made in Hull’ theme, we will be running a secret twitter and web campaign throughout the year. It’s going to be 'woolly good fun' (that’s a clue) and we want lots of people to get involved! Check out HullWoollyZoo to find out more….

First resident of our 'Hull Woolly Zoo'

There may be other ‘Made in Hull’ stuff, as yet unannounced, so keep an eye out on our events pages...

History Centre Team