History Research Seminar on Wednesday 26 October: Andy Burn (Durham)

The next instalment in the History Seminar Series takes place on Wednesday afternoon, when we will be joined by Andy Burn from Durham. Andy will speak to us about a subject with increasing relevance in the twenty-first century – short-term work and unemployment in the North East. His paper is entitled: ‘”A hard and tedious winter”: seasonal work and poverty in seventeenth-century Newcastle’ (see poster attached).

The paper takes place in Lipman 121 at 4.30pm as usual, with drinks and dinner to follow.

Award for Documentary Film on Martin Luther King Jr's 1967 Visit to Newcastle

At the Royal Television Society Awards last week, the winner in the Best Factual Production category went to A King’s Speech, a documentary about Martin Luther King Jr’s 1967 visit to Newcastle. The documentary was based largely on research conducted by Brian Ward, Northumbria’s Professor in American Studies and a leading expert in the history of the US civil rights movement. In the early 1990s, Brian discovered long-lost footage of the unscheduled speech that King gave in Newcastle and later wrote a scholarly account of the circumstances surrounding King's visit. Thanks to the documentary, narrated by Lenny Henry and produced by David Morrison for BBC North East, public awareness of King’s trip to Newcastle and of his moving speech is growing once again.

If you want to learn more about King’s visit and about the making of this award-winning documentary Brian and BBC Senior Producer Murphy Cobbing will be discussing them at the Great North Museum at 7pm on April 24, 2015. The event will also include music, a wine reception, and screenings of the documentary and King’s speech.

Admission to A King’s Speech on Tyneside: Remembering Martin Luther King’s Historic Visit to Newcastle is free, but you will need to book a place. (For more details, see here.)

This event is part of the Journey to Justice project on the US civil rights movement and its links to struggles for social justice in the North East which will be coming to venues around Tyneside this Spring.

Mapping Tyneside Radicalism

Joseph Hardwick

The members of Northumbria University's Histories of Activism group are currently putting together a website that maps moments of radical activity that have occurred on Tyneside since the seventeenth century. The project was inspired by our belief that Tyneside’s rich and diverse radical history is only fitfully commemorated in the urban fabric of Newcastle and Gateshead. Mapping Tyneside Radicalism is designed to create a space where academics, researchers and local communities can work together to build a permanent memorial to the region’s tradition of radicalism and activism. This interactive website has gathered an archive of historic activism, and it allows users to map this archive on to the modern Tyneside landscape. Every event comes with a short commentary and links to further readings, and so this resource will be of considerable use to students, schoolchildren, researchers and members of the public. The website is currently being developed by the Community IT Academy and will go live in May 2015.

We are looking for members of the public to help us to develop our understanding of Tyneside radicalism. If you have an event that you think should be commemorated on this website, then please get in touch with the project coordinator, Dr Joe Hardwick, at joseph.hardwick@northumbria.ac.uk.