Story Category: Legacy

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

It’s Easter week and unfortunately you can’t visit the Booth Museum when we would normally have plenty of fun activities for you. So we thought we would do three special additions of our usual Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? quiz online to show you some unusual animal eggs, made by some pretty incredible animals.

These are all objects we have behind the scenes at the Booth Museum! Here is Mystery Egg number 1 of 3, look out for the others over the next few days.

Mystery Egg 1

Mystery egg 1 Andrea Westmoreland from DeLand, United States / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)

This unusual string of egg cases is made by a marine animal and can be found on the beaches of the US. Can you guess the animal that made it?

Clue 1

You might get an animal that makes a shell like this in your garden.

Clue 2

They make shells like in the photo below… do these look familiar?

Mystery egg clue. Photo by Pete / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-

And the answer is… Drum roll please!

The knobbed whelk, Busycon carica. 

These marine snails are quite large, larger than your average garden snail weighing in at around 1.1lbs (around 500g or half a bag of sugar) and measuring up to 30cm. Females are typically larger than males, scientists think this may be due to the fact that some of these snails can start off as males when they are young and then change into females as they get older. But their size is nothing on the largest marine snail in the world, the Australian trumpet snail, or giant whelk, Syrinx aruanus, which measures up to 70cm!

Knobbed whelks are carnivorous animals with clams, oysters and mussels among their preferred meals. To feed, they use their large muscular foot to hold their prey in place and use their shell edge to prize open their food’s shell. They can also secrete corrosive chemicals from their proboscis (tube mouth) which helps them to drill a hole in the shell of their prey to reach the soft juicy flesh inside – yum!

When they are ready to mate in spring, females lay a string of up to 40 egg cases which are anchored at one end to the sand. Each capsule contains around 100 fertilised baby snail eggs inside. When they hatch around 13 months later, the juviniles look like tiny replicas of the adults – so cute!

Living in the U.K. I won’t be jetting off to the U.S. anytime soon, but not to worry, egg cases of the common whelk, Buccinum undatum can be seen right here on beaches of the UK! You might have even seen one on during your daily exercise if you are lucky enough to live by the sea!

Sarah Smith / Egg cases – common whelk

Come and see some impressive shells made by other sea snails at the Booth Museum when we re-open. 

Grace Brindle, Collections Assistant

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Today, 8 April, marks the birth date of Barbara Bodichon, nee Leigh Smith. An artist, social reformer, women’s rights campaigner and co-founder of Girton College, Cambridge, Barbara Bodichon challenged the status quo from day one and is an important figure in our 100 Pioneering Blogs of Sussex series.

Barbara Bodichon, from a sketch made in 1861. Portrait by Samuel Lawrence, 1880

Born in Whatlington near Battle, 8 April 1827, as the illegitimate daughter of a Derbyshire milliner and the politician Benjamin Leigh Smith, she was born in disgrace, yet her outsider status and exposure to unconventional thinking in her family (her parents never married despite having three more children) set the seeds for a remarkable life of challenging the norms and restrictions that women lived under.

Despite being a member of the landed gentry, Benjamin Leigh Smith held radical views and was a benefactor of the poor. He sent his children to be educated at local schools, brought them up himself when Bodichon’s mother died in 1834, and, controversially for the day when family fortunes and property were bequeathed to sons, settled the same amount of money on Bodichon as he did his sons on their twenty-first birthdays.

This enabled Bodichon to avoid the pitfalls of seeking marriage that usually fell to young Victorian women.  Instead she used her wealth and energy not only to explore her intellectual and artistic pursuits, studying painting at Bedford Square Ladies College in 1849, but to agitate for women’s rights.  From 1850 with her group of friends and fellow early feminists who formed the so-called ‘Ladies of Langham Place’ group, now considered one of the first organised women’s movements in the country, she explored, discussed and publicised issues of equality, particularly pertaining to the many ways women were discriminated against by the law.

One of the issues they deplored was the fact that, upon marriage, every single ounce of women’s property, including money, belongings, inheritances and even future earnings was automatically given up to the husband to spend, fritter away or use as he wished. In 1854 Bodichon spelled out these bitter realities in a book, the Brief Summary of the Laws of England Concerning Women. This meticulously researched list of all the different laws that put women at a disadvantage was the first time the public had been exposed to a clear understanding of the legal position of women. With the genie well and truly out of the bottle, the issue quickly became a national talking point and a committee was formed by the Law Amendment Society to investigate. The Ladies of Langham Place started their own Married Women’s Property Committee which became a nation-wide campaign group. In 1856 – in what’s now considered one of the first organised feminist actions in Britain – a petition demanding change was submitted to the House of Lords.  It was rejected that year but smoothed the way for a limited enactment in 1870 and the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882, which allowed married women to own and control property in their own right.

The workplace was another arena where Bodichon and her friends called for change. With women’s work largely consisting of ill paid drudge and women largely barred from university education and most careers, Bodichon published in 1857 a radical pamphlet, Women and Work in which she called for equality of education and work opportunities, challenging the prevailing opinion that employment wasn’t appropriate for respectable women and suggesting that married women’s financial dependence on their husbands was degrading.  In 1858, now married to French doctor, Eugene Bodichon, she co-founded with her friend, the feminist Bessie Rayner Parkes, the English Woman’s Journal, which discussed, developed, and publicised further the employment and equality issues she had developed in Women and Work.  Linked to this, in 1859 she co-founded, with women’s rights campaigner Jessie Boucherett and philanthropist Adelaide Ann Proctor, The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women with the aim of promoting women’s training and apprenticeships.

Bodichon had already made inroads in education by opening a progressive infants school in London where children learned together regardless of their social class in 1854. She worked to make higher education a possibility for women by developing with Emily Davies an experimental college for women at Hitchin. This developed into the 1869 established Girton College, the first women’s college at Cambridge University, although female students had to wait until 1948 to gain full membership of the University.

Although Bodichon was not the first woman to agitate for the vote, she co-drafted with Boucherett and feminist Helen Taylor a petition in favour of women’s suffrage in 1865. It was presented to the House of Commons by John Stuart Mill MP in 1866 but was defeated.  In 1869 after publishing  ‘Reasons for and against the Enfranchisement of Women’, Bodichon toured the country, appearing at meetings and giving speeches in favour of votes for women.  After retirement to her house at Scalands Gate (now called Scalands Folly) in Sussex in 1882, she built an extension to her house to serve as a reading room, library and night school for young working men who could not read or write.

As well as her incredible activities fighting for women’s rights, Bodichon, somehow, found the time for a career as an artist. Her work was exhibited at the Royal Society and was widely admired. Her London salon was a meeting ground of the greatest talents, political, literary and artistic, of the day, including the writer George Eliot who became one of her closest friends, early physician and fellow Hastings resident, Dr Helen Blackwell, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Hastings painter Marianne North and Dante Gabriel Rossetti Rossetti. Some of Bodichon’s paintings can be seen today at Hastings Museum.

Ventnor, Isle of Wight, Barbara Bodichon, 1856

Bodichon died in 1891 after a life of tireless service to bettering the lot of women and fighting for a more just society. Despite her remarkable and wide ranging achievements, she seems to have fallen out of the canon of great Victorian reformers and is not the household name she deserves to be. In 2007 feminist campaigner, Lesley Abdela came across Bodichon’s grave in the Brightling churchyard in a state of disrepair. The historian Dr Judith Rowbotham issued an appeal for funds to restore the grave and its surrounds and under the eye of Mrs Irene Baker, the Secretary of Brightling Parochial Church Council the grave was repaired and restored.

As an interesting side note, Bodichon was related by her paternal uncle to Florence Nightingale who never acknowledged her due to her illegitimacy.

Written by social hstorian, Louise Peskett

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

The second of our Nature at Home series of blogs looks at what you might find in your garden or local area, and gives a few ideas of how you might observe them, starting with some very familiar visitors.

• Read Exploring the Garden part one

Of all the visitors to your garden, birds and mammals are the most obvious as they are easily visible. However, with the exception of some bold characters, these larger animals tend to have a healthy fear of humans or other predators, so will usually move rapidly from one spot to the next.

With patience you can observe these creatures going about their business and sometimes experience unexpected dramas.   

Sparrowhawk on starling (taken in authors garden, Feb 2020, using Nikon DSLR with 150 – 600mm telephoto lens, low light)

Though these animals can be very cautious, you’ll have an advantage to those watching animals at the coast or in the countryside. Your home is a ready-made hide with comfy seating, heating and kitchen and bathroom facilities. From behind glass, and with the lights out, most of the garden animals won’t notice you. You can observe the comings and goings of garden birds whilst enjoying your breakfast or a cup of tea. Even if you don’t have a garden, you can still enjoy wildlife from your window. My colleague lives on the first floor, and is without a garden, but looks forward to the return of swifts each spring which she watches screaming and flying at high speed between the rooftops outside her central Brighton window. 

Blackbird on neighbour’s roof, March 2016. Taken with Nikon DSLR and 55-300mm lens

This time of year is great for bird watching, especially in Sussex’s coastal location facing Europe. Migratory birds are returning to the UK to breed, and chiffchaffs are some of the earliest arrivals. They can be heard at the tops of trees making a very recognisable chiff-chaff-chiff-chaff call. Other birds such as goldfinches and starlings also tend to perch at the tops of trees or on TV aerials. These are good opportunities to use binoculars if you have them, though be careful where you aim them when pointing at houses. The RSPB have some good tips for choosing binoculars or monoculars.

Chiffchaff taken this March (taken with DSLR with 150 – 600mm telephoto lens)

Our resident birds like blue and great tits are also busily collecting material and checking out sites such as bird boxes for nesting. Blue tits don’t seem to mind their homes being fairly close to humans. If you can, put up a nest-box that can be viewed from indoors and see if anything chooses to nest there. You could even leave some hair from a hairbrush close by for them to use as nesting material. Setting up a birdfeeder within view of your favourite window seat is also a good way to guarantee views of the birds. Feeders are also likely to attract the most common mammal most of us will see, the grey squirrel.  

Grey squirrel on bird table, 2014. Taken with entry level DSLR

This is also a good place to focus your camera on, either hand-held or using a tripod. Should you be interested in taking up wildlife photography, there are a number of good blogs online with tips. Two examples are here, but many more can be found online,

The Digital Photography School 5 Top Value Lenses for Getting Started in Wildlife Photography

or if you prefer video Paul Miguel Photography Wildlife Photography for Beginners

Great Spotted Woodpecker on bird feeder. A range of seeds in different feeders can encourage a wider variety of birds. Taken with DSLR and 150 – 600mm telephoto lens

Keeping records of your observations in a notebook or digitally can be of interest to yourself, but if you want to give something back, you can get involved in citizen science. The British Trust for Ornithology’s (BTO) garden birdwatch project and other similar projects allow you to upload your observations and help scientists keep track of UK wild bird populations. In the Sussex Biosphere region, there is also the City Nature Challenge, which encourages you to record what you find in your local area.

Another aspect of having the time to observe these animals is starting to see and appreciate some features you may not have noticed before. There are beautiful iridescent feathers on pigeons, starlings and magpies, which make them a lot more colourful than they initially appear. Close observation of little brown birds can also make you realise that what appears to be a large flock of sparrows can often be a mix of dunnocks, juvenile greenfinch, goldfinch and chaffinch as well. And if you are lucky enough to have small predators visiting, the larger stoat can be identified from a small weasel by the black tip to its tail.    

Starling. The iridescence on their feathers is more spectacular than they initially appear. Taken with DSLR and 150 – 600mm telephoto lens)

By observing the movements of the birds in your garden you’ll soon learn where their nest sites are located, even if you never see their nests (please don’t go exploring for the nests – it is a criminal offence to disturb nesting sites as it causes the birds stress). As the season progresses, you’ll also be able to observe juveniles fledging. What could be more pleasing than seeing a family of wrens fledge from the depths of a hedge or half a dozen juvenile blue tits, you’ve watched being fed over the spring, burst from a nest box? 

Blue-tit emerging from nestbox. Taken with entry level DSLR and 55-300mm telephoto lens

With the exception of grey squirrels, mammals tend to be much harder to view as they are often very nervous and many are also nocturnal. Most of the common mammal visitors to your garden or neighbourhood can also be very divisive. Foxes, squirrels, rats and mice are the most likely to be seen, and each get varying levels of negative press. Even badgers, which you may be lucky enough to see, have recently suffered culls. The one urban mammal which tends to be liked by all is the hedgehog.    

Fox on rear porch, 2019. Taken with DSLR and 50mm lens, night – with flash

The larger mammals can be viewed easily from windows on first or second floors, especially with binoculars. Foxes will happily forage at dusk and during the night under the glow of streetlights. With streets generally empty of people, foxes should be much happier to come out and you may see them more in the early morning or late afternoon light. If you have a welcoming, safe garden, foxes may become comfortable enough to regularly visit, and may even bring their cubs to play in summer. If foxes do visit your garden, observe them with the lights off and sit back from the window, so you are shadowed from their view and avoid scaring them off. 

If you have feeding stations for birds, the bird seed is likely to attract rodents like mice and rats. Both will tend to be nocturnal, but if they get used to a regular, safe source of food they may become bold enough to come out during the day. Whilst initially quite fascinating to observe, if these animals are regularly visiting it might be worth making the feeding stations more difficult for non-flying animals to access as mice and rats can quickly reproduce, resulting in large populations. Squirrel-proof feeders and tall bird-tables are usually effective at deterring mice and rats.

Mice on bird table at night. Whilst they may be cute, if this happens it might be good to try and block their access, or stop putting food out for a while. Taken with entry level DSLR and 55-300mm lens at night with flash

Hedgehogs can be encouraged into a garden by providing access at the bottom of fences (only make holes in agreement with neighbours). A healthy garden with lots of invertebrates will be a haven for hedgehogs, as well as birds. It is best not to use slug-pellets in your garden as they will poison both hedgehogs and birds. Hedgehogs tend to be nocturnal so will only be apparent at night. It is difficult to photograph animals at night without more expensive equipment, but if you are curious about your nighttime visitors, wildlife cameras could be set up in your garden (The RSPB sell them)

To photograph these mammals, set up a tripod or stable surface for your camera. This avoids blurry images, as it is likely mammals will be active in low light. The animals will also be moving about so patience is key to get a photograph when they are still. You may be tempted to use a flash, but this will scare all but the boldest animals off. If you have external lights you could try leaving those on so that the animals get used to visiting the feeding stations under light. This will make photographing them much easier (though it will take time for the animals to feel safe enough to linger under the lights). With patience though, images like those below can be achieved – even for beginners using the auto settings on the camera.    

Camera and tripod. Recommended for low light conditions, or for monitoring a fixed spot

So next time you’re out see what you can find and if you’re in the Brighton region, why not record those finds in the City Nature Challenge.

Mute Swan photographed on Samsung smartphone, during daily exercise, March 2020

Fox (who felt safe in the garden) sitting outside the conservatory door. Taken on Samsung smartphone, Winter 2019

Squirrel in Toronto, Canada 2008, taken on Kodak bridge camera. Even a basic point and shoot camera can take passable images. Great if you have an old camera in the cupboard for young children to use

Image 11, 12, 13 – Gallery of images taken with basic phone or point and shoot cameras.

All photos (c) Lee Ismail

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences and Kerrie Curzon, Collections Assistant

More information

• Exploring the Garden part one

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

For the month of April, the Booth encourages you to look out for the Goldcrest, Regulus regulus, in your garden, in the park (if you’re exercising at an appropriate distance from others), or even the view from the window of your flat.

UK conservation status: Green

The goldcrest, along with the firecrest (Regulus ignicapilla), is our smallest bird and at only 8.5cm it is half a centimetre smaller than the wren. Aristotle describes it as ‘…just a little bigger than a locust, its crest is the colour of sun shining through mist…’.

The Goldcrest start to breed in late April in the UK. This is a good time of year to see this tiny bird, before it can hide behind the green leaves of later spring and summer. The crest is yellow in the female and orange with yellow edging in the male. They are often seen with long-tailed tits, moving from tree to tree as they feed on small insects. They have a plump and rounded body, which Mr Booth’s taxidermists seemed to have missed in their specimens.

Why not come and have a look at the Booth Museum specimens once we reopen and compare them with any you’ve managed to photograph (or our sample images).

Reference: Leroi, A. M. (2014) The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science, London, Bloomsbury.

All photos (c) Lee Ismail

Kerrie Curzon, Collections Assistant and Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

In 2009 I was the Adult Learning Officer for the Adult Event Programme creating and running public events across Royal Pavilion & Museums. This was one of 62 events programmed in 2009.

This picture was taken in the foyer of Brighton Museum & Art Gallery on Sunday 30 August 2009 and shows a group of jazz musicians including the eminent Bobby Wellins on saxophone.

The event supported Brighton Museum’s summer exhibition The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock, works from the British Museum’s American prints collection that toured selected museums in the UK in 2008 and 2009 finishing at Brighton. The exhibition attracted huge public interest wherever it was shown.

Here at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery a series of events were programmed to enhance the visitor experience of The American Scene including an American-themed family activity day on Saturday 4^th July with jive dancing workshops and print-making. The event programme for adults included a course of study days looking at American culture in the 20^th century: Flappers to Art Deco, the Great American Movie and American literature with poetry readings in the exhibition galleries. However, music was always going to play an important part in the event programme for this exhibition and I was delighted to engage this trio of jazz musicians who are seen playing here on the day the exhibition closed.

Bobby Wellins was born Robert Coull Wellins in Glasgow Scotland in 1936. His father was Max Wellins, a saxophonist, and his mother Sally Coull, a singer. The couple performed with the Sammy Miller Show Band. After his first music lessons at home Bobby studied harmony at Chichester College of Further Education, and clarinet at the RAF School of Music in Uxbridge, west London. The 1950s and 1960s were a heyday for Wellins with the jazz scene booming at clubs like The Flamingo, Ronnie Scott’s and the Nucleus Club, his “jazz university”. Wellins also made a living by his music playing on US ocean-going liners between 1959 and 1961 when cruises were strictly for the wealthy glamourous set. Wellins was most famous for a single, exquisite improvised solo on Starless and Bible Black, from the pianist Stan Tracey’s 1965 classic Under Milk Wood, his playing described as “a tenor saxophone passage of birdlike warbles, mournful hoots softly blown into deep spaces, fragmentary motifs that would briefly consolidate into hints of a songlike theme.”

Wellins left London and settled on the south coast and was always active; teaching at the West Sussex Institute of Higher Education in Chichester, performing as soloist in Charlie Watts’s eclectic improv-to-swing orchestra and playing and recording with big bands and solo into the 1990s and beyond. In 2013, Wellins was the subject of the documentary film Dreams Are Free, shown at the Brighton, Chichester and London film festivals that year.

Bobby Wellins was married and had two daughters. He died on 27 October 2016 aged 80.

My memory of the day is the delight on the faces of those who came to hear Bobby Wellins and the jazz trio, some older people expressing their joy at hearing the music of their youth in such pleasant and welcoming surroundings. The trio played in the museum foyer yet the evocative uplifting jazz sound drifted through open doors and up through the museum galleries giving pleasure to all visitors that late summer day.

Paula Wrightson, Venue Officer Preston Manor

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Today’s 100 Pioneering Women of Sussex blog post is written by guest blogger, Amy Zamarripa Solis and highlights the incredible story of Sarah Forbes Bonetta.

Whenever I pass St Nicholas Church, Brighton climbing up the hilly Dyke Road from the town centre, I always think of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the famous slave princess and goddaughter of Queen Victoria. She married in this unlikely seaside church in August 1862.Not very big or grand this church, not as Victorian as one would think, but looking at it with modern eyes, it seems rather humble. And yet, according to Bert Williams MBE D Lit., co-founder of Brighton & Hove Black History, when she got married there were so many people in attendance that she couldn’t get through the door to walk to the altar.

Sarah Forbes Bonetta, (Sarah Davies), 1862, taken by Camille Silvy

In the height of summer 1862, a wedding party like no other strode through Brighton. 10 carriages of white and African high society people made its ways to the church.

Captain Frederick Forbes, on the other hand, was impressed, as he documented in his journal:

“I have only to add a few particulars about my extraordinary present ‘the African Child’ – one of the captives of this dreadful slave-hunt was this interesting girl. It is usual to reserve the best born for the high behest of royalty and the immolation on the tombs of the decease nobility. For one of these ends she has been detained at court for two years, proving, by her not having been sold to slave dealers, that she was of good family. She is a perfect genius; she now speaks English well, and has a great talent for music. She has won the affections, but with few exceptions, of all who have known her. She is far in advance of any white child of her age, in aptness of learning, and strength of mind and affection”.

There is a deep sadness and hidden trauma in the eyes of Sarah Forbes Bonetta in every photo I have seen of her. Omoba Aina, as she was born, or Sally, as Queen Victoria nicknamed her. She was named after her rescuers ship, HMS Bonetta.

Sarah was born in 1843, a West African Egbado princess of the Yoruba people. At age five her village was attacked and her parents killed. Shortly before she was due to be sacrificed in the court of King Ghezo, she was saved by a British Captain, Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy who suggested she be offered as a present to Queen Victoria.

 Transported to England, Sarah lived at first with Captain Forbes’s family. On 9 November, she was taken to Windsor Castle and received by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The Queen was so impressed with Sarah that she paid for her education and met with her on several occasions, even writing about her in her journal.

Sarah was plagued by fragile health. In 1851 she returned to Africa to attend the Female Institution in Freetown, Sierra Leone. At 12 years old, Queen Victoria commanded that Sarah return to England and was placed under the charge of Mr and Mrs Schon at Chatham.

Growing up, Sarah spent a lot of time visiting Queen Victoria and their household at Windsor Castle and was close friends with her daughter Princess Alice. Queen Victoria was impressed with Sarah’s natural regal manner and her academic abilities and knowledge of literature, art and music.

by Camille Silvy, albumen print, 15 September 1862

In a very modern way, Sarah had a career, training as a teacher so that was one thing she enjoyed. But the Queen made sure she understood that she must marry in order to be maintained in the manner in which she was accustomed.

An appropriate suitor was found: Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies, a wealthy Yoruba businessman. Of course she had to marry someone who was African like her. Sarah refused and was sent to live in Brighton, with two elderly ladies whose house she described as a “desolate little pig sty”. Unhappy with the situation, Sarah felt she had not choice but to accept the offer.

Following their wedding in 1862, the couple lived briefly in Brighton’s Seven Dials at 17 Clifton Hill. They then moved to Lagos and had three children: Victoria Davies was born in 1863, followed by Arthur Davies in 1871 and Stella Davies in 1873. The first born was named after Queen Victoria, who was given an annuity by the Queen and continued to visit the royal household throughout her life.

Sarah died on 15 August 1880 in the city of Funchal, the capital of Madeira Island, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic ocean. Her husband erected a granite obelisk-shaped monument more than eight feet high in her memory at Ijon in Western Lagos, where he had started a cocoa farm.

 The inscription on the obelisk reads:

IN MEMORY OF PRINCESS SARAH FORBES BONETTA

WIFE OF THE HON J.P.L. DAVIES WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE AT MADEIRA AUGUST 15TH 1880

AGED 37 YEARS

Sources:

https://www.black-history.org.uk/19th-century/sarah-forbes-bonetta-1843-1880/

Royal Pavilion & Museums collections, Brighton Gazette August 1862.

https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/trails/black-and-asian-history-and-victorian-britain/sarah-forbes-bonetta-and-family

About the author:

Amy Zamarripa Solis

 Amy Zamarripa Solis is a producer, writer and artist from Austin, Texas. She is Director of This Too Is Real, an arts production and management company, specialising in arts, culture, heritage and diversity. She also runs Writing Our Legacy, a literature organisation set up in 2012, focused on supporting Black and ethnic minority writers and writing in Sussex and South East of England. Her latest projects include Constructed Geographies, a touring exhibition of Sussex visual artists (2018-19), Hidden Sussex anthology (Writing Our Legacy, 2019) and No Place Like Home, an exploration into childhood home and its loss, starting with her own Mexican-American community in Austin Texas, ¡La Cultura No Se Vende! (Our Culture is Not For Sale!), told through short stories, film and archive material.

 She is Co-Chair of Disability Arts Online and on the Boards of AudioActive and New Writing South.

https://www.thistooisreal.co.uk/

Writing Our Legacy

Writing Our Legacy is an organisation whose aim is to raise awareness of the contributions of Black and Ethnic Minority (BME) writers, poets, playwrights and authors born, living or connected to Sussex and the South East. We employ Mosaic charity’s definition of Black to be ‘Black people’ and ‘mixed-parentage people’ including all those people whose ancestral origins are African, Asian, Caribbean, Chinese, Middle Eastern, North African, Romany, the indigenous peoples of the South Pacific islands, the American continents, Australia and New Zealand. We run events across Sussex and the South East that showcase emerging and established BME writers and provide professional development and networking opportunities.

http://writingourlegacy.org.uk

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

In 2009 I was the Adult Learning Officer for the Adult Event Programme creating and running public events across Royal Pavilion & Museums. This was one of 62 events that were programmed in 2009.

This historical fencing demonstration took place on the weekend of the 3 & 4 October 2009 and was a display of sword fencing over the ages linked to a Regency-themed living history event taking place inside the Royal Pavilion. Called ‘For King & Country’ it was created by Past Pleasures, the UK’s foremost living history company.

The people in the pictures are members of the Sussex Sword Academy based in Brighton. They are demonstrating various techniques used in the past in duels and warfare. These skills are demonstrated as a martial art and not to be confused with stage or sport fighting. This means they really were fighting with swords, with genuinely clashing fast-moving blades.

The Sussex Sword Academy made historically accurate fencing masks specially to wear at the demonstration in keeping with the historic setting of the Royal Pavilion, which that year was undergoing restoration work. The swordsmen and swordswomen are dressed in white Regency style shirts and black breeches. Note the ribbons worn at the knees, the colour of which will have been chosen by the individual.

The display soon drew the attention of passers-by who stopped in amazement at such a rare sight. Members of the public had the opportunity to hear commentary on the proceedings by the fencing masters.

The Sussex Sword Academy also hosted a lecture-display in the Pavilion’s Music Room on a low stage. The fencing masters talked audiences through Regency fencing techniques with students of the academy providing demonstrations of correct body posture, moves and sword work.

I remember the weekend as exhilarating and sometimes nerve-wracking, especially after all the preparation necessary to keep the event safe with those blades flying around. Sword-reach was carefully assessed in the Music Room in respect to the precious glass chandeliers hanging low in the room. Thankfully, the weather was mild and dry all weekend.

Paula Wrightson, Venue Officer Preston Manor

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

The British Gypsy could be viewed as the stranger within, or as German Sociologist Georg Simmel described, a ‘Stranger in society from elsewhere’: a people who settled among other inhabitants, though were treated with suspicion and ignorance as they represented an exotic other that was difficult for many to understand.

To address such ignorance the Queer the Pier (QTP) curation team wanted to utilise Brighton Museum & Art Gallery’s ‘Gipsy Fortune Telling Machine’ in the exhibition. As Community Curator leading research and content for queer Roma inclusion, I collaborated with internationally acclaimed Roma artist Delaine Le Bas, academic Dr Lucie Fremlova, LGBTIQ+ Artists and workshop participants. Applying the theoretical framework of intersectionality; understanding that as both queer and part of the Roma, Gypsy and Traveller community, the participants created responses that challenge stereotypes and discrimination across these interconnected social categories.

I had the privilege to work on this project due to my own Romany heritage. My great-grandmother, Rhoda Wells (1897-1982) was a Romany Gypsy living in the New Forest, Hampshire. She met and eventually married my great-grandfather, Ralph Cuttriss Hinkins (1882-1952), when he and his father, my great, great-grandfather, Francis Robert ‘Frank’ Hinkins (1852-1934) befriended the Gypsy families. They spent many years periodically travelling with the Gypsies across the South of England. Many of the Hinkins clan were appalled by Frank and Ralph. It resulted in a distancing within family circles.

Frank was a photographer and illustrator. In 1915, father and son published, Romany Life: experienced and observed during many years of friendly intercourse with the Gypsies under the nom de plume Frank Cuttris. This book is still available in paperback, published by Echo Library.

The Keep holds three lantern slides attributed to Frank all circa 1915 of portraits of travelling people.

Decolonisation of objects in museums is imperative to inclusion. The LGBTIQ+ Roma, Gypsy and Traveller workshop collaboration sort to re-interpret the museum’s problematic Victorian ‘Gipsy Fortune Telling Machine’. The object perpetuated a stereotype of Roma culture through the stylisation of the machine’s human figure and the misspelling of ‘Gipsy’ with and ‘i’, not a ‘y’. Reaching out to a continually persecuted community, participants were welcome into a safe space within the museum to produce drawn and written responses to the machine. A theme emerged of colourful images reflecting the Romani flag, the Rainbow flag and the use of positive language. Romani – the Roma language has filtered through Cockney English and Polari (which was adopted into gay subculture to secretly communicate). Familiar words; clobber (clothes), minge (vagina) and chavi (child/friend, now used as derogative) originate from Romani, Cant or Argot languages.

Developing ideas from the workshop, Delaine Le Bas created beautiful contemporary fortune cards with positive messages (£1 in the slot, a card is yours). In her words, ‘Fortune Telling is an intimate form of communication between people, it requires close contact physically and mentally in its true form.’ She continues, ‘for me in particular coming from such a demonised community I refuse to respond in a negative way.’

Queer the Pier exhibition. Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. Fortune Telling Card by Delaine Le Bas. Photograph by Lisa Hinkins.

I edited the accompanying free takeaway Zine that addresses stereotypes. It includes the following; “Gypsiness” is a term to describe the phenomenon of dissociation where over time Gypsy identity becomes abstracted and separated from the people themselves. Through images and literature, the dominant culture dictates the representation of a marginal group, in this case Gypsies. Stereotypes of Gypsy women have been perpetuated by figures such as Vita Sackville-West, who invented Romany ancestry for herself on her Spanish side of her family to explain her ‘bohemian behaviour,’ (lesbian lovers).

Academic Dr Lucie Fremlova’s post doctorial collaboration with LGBTIQ+ Roma Artists has produced powerful images that break down and challenge the dominant representation of queer Roma people. Photographs that were created during a one-week workshop in Brighton have been printed in the Zine. An image of one of the Roma artists by the Palace Pier’s ‘Zoltar Fortune Telling Machine,’ accompanies the text for the Victorian machine. It is a powerful reminder that stereotypes are still interlaced with contemporary arcade amusements.

Queer the Pier exhibition. Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. ‘Gipsy Fortune Telling Machine’ Royal Pavilion & Museums Collection. Photograph by Lisa Hinkins.

Delaine Le Bas pays tribute in the Zine to her Uncle Eddie who moved to Brighton in the mid 1960s with his partner Peter. She acknowledges that their lives had not been easy being Romani and gay, but Delaine states that Eddie and Peter taught her the importance of being yourself and that love should be unconditional.

City based organisation Friends, Families and Travellers a leading national charity that works on behalf of all Gypsies, Roma and Travellers, provided support and contacts for this project. This led to contact with Roma poet Lois Brookes-Jones who beautifully weaved Romani and English words into a poem expressing lesbian desire especially for the Zine.

It is my sincere hope that this project engagement with LGBTIQ+ Roma, Gypsies and Travellers will foster less suspicion and ignorance to ‘strangers within.’ Museum staff were fantastically supportive in encouraging an ignored community through its doors.

A thought; is it not ironic that a people so rich in its own creative arts, music and culture is never fully appreciated within the institutions that claim to be custodians of our material culture? Perhaps we have an opportunity now to re-address that.

Outreach: Friends, Family and Travellers   Traveller Pride

1 Kalwant Bhopal and Martin Myers, Insiders, outsiders and others: Gypsies and identity (Hertfordshire: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2008)

Queer the Pier Online

Find out more about Queer the Pier on with our online resources:

• Keep an eye on this blog for updates on our progress
• Come to Brighton LGBTQ+ History Club for more inspirational stories from our community
• Also, be sure to post your queer memories on our twitter and Instagram pages with #queeronthepier!

Lisa Hinkins, MA Student, Museum Gallery Explainer and artist.

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Making activities are a big part of what we do at Hove Museum. As the museum is currently shut during the coronavirus lockdown, Louise Dennis shares some mosaic crafting activities that children can enjoy at home.

As you can’t visit Hove Museum this Spring to join in the usual arts and crafts, why don’t you enjoy some eco friendly craft ideas for all the family at home?

We have put together some handy steps and tips, using readily available materials, and have included some fun Easter resources for you to download too.

These activities are suitable for any age as your design can be as complicated or as simple as you want to make it. Very young children will enjoy the sticking, but will need help using scissors.

A small cardboard egg design made using homemade glue

You will need:

• A selection of cardboard and paper recycling – cereal boxes, pizza boxes, magazines, flyers etc.
• Clean, dry eggs shells if you want to use them in your mosaic
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Glue (or use flour and water paste)
• Your imagination!

Tweezers and/or cotton buds, a hole punch, tissue paper, sequins or other craft embellishments and coloured felt tip pens could be useful too, but are not essential.

To Make Flour and Water Glue

Mix 2 tbsp of flour with a little water to make a thick, sticky paste and spread it on – add your tiles and then let your work dry in a warm, dry place or carefully use a hairdryer.

Mosaic Collage Eggs

One of these eggs has been decorated using eggshells (some plain and some coloured with pen) as well as cardboard shapes. Eggshells are fun to use if a bit fiddly!

• To start, cut out your egg shape from recycled cardboard boxes (and a backing shape if you’re making it into a card – see template below). If you choose the coloured side of the box to stick your mosaic tiles on to this will mean you have a plain side at the back to write your Easter message on, if you’re making a card.
• Then cut up your cardboard or magazines into little pieces to make your mosaic tiles. It’s fun to gather all your colours into little piles. You could cut out pictures or text from your boxes as well as coloured shapes.

Notice the little coloured squares that can be found on cereal boxes and the ‘Wheatie’ pictures were fun to use too

As you do the sticking don’t worry if there are gaps as you can go back later and add in little bits if you need to

• Spread some glue onto your egg shape and then begin adding your paper or cardboard mosaic tiles. It works well to glue first and then fit the shape together as you go, a bit like doing a jigsaw, rather than arranging a complete design and gluing afterwards.

Once the glue is dry trim any overhanging tiles

• Once the glue is dry trim any overhanging tiles.

Here’s the finished egg! A spring scene

• When you’ve finished you can make a hole in the top to hang it up as a decoration or affix a backing piece of card to the back to make it stand up as a greetings card. Here’s the front and back of a different design. This egg shape has been made into a card that stands up.

Mosaic Picture Design

You don’t have to make an egg – how about making a picture or a bookmark?

Tips

• For this technique bold designs will work best, as you will need something that will translate easily into block shapes.
• Once you start sticking try not to worry too much about following your pencil drawing exactly.
• A design that places contrasting colours next to each other will work well.
• For patterns and abstracts try choosing colours and shapes as you go, fitting them together in any way that pleases you.
• The side panels of cereal boxes would make a good shape for a bookmark.
• Cotton buds are useful for spreading glue and a cotton bud with a little glue on it can be used to pick up and place tiles into your design.

Design an abstract pattern

Stage 1. Try using a circle, drawing around a glass or bowl, as the base for your design

Stage 2. Then add shapes, gluing wherever you fancy, fitting them together like a jigsaw.

The finished piece. The small circles were made using a holepunch on the cereal boxes

We hope you have fun doing these activities.

For more Easter fun, you can download the following activity sheets. 

With best wishes for Spring from everyone at Hove Museum and Art Gallery.

Louise Dennis, Hove Family Events Programmer

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

The Royal Pavilion has long served as a source of inspiration. Whether you are an artist, writer or simply enjoy making a creative twist on a local landmark, its a palace of possibilities.

One of our members, Kit Connor, has shared two photographs he has created of the Royal Pavilion, combining his fondness for the building with a love of the Beatles.

Good Day Sunshine

Image credit: Kit Connor

Titled ‘Good Day Sunshine’, thsi photo references the Beatles’ ‘Good Morning Sunshine’, from their LP Revolver.

The Beatles link with Brighton is they performed at the Hippodrome Theatre three times in the 60s. They delivered two performances every night and were paid £850 the last time they performed.

Golden Slumbers

Image credit: Kit Connor

Golden Slumbers became famous for a second time with Elbow’s version for the John Lewis 2017 Christmas TV advert.

The two pictures bookend a perfect Brighton summer. Good Morning Sunshine captures a morning just like today, April sunshine. Golden Slumbers shows an autumnal afternoon, as the sun sets behind the Royal Pavilion.

If you are a Beatles’ fan, the titles also bookend their career: Good Morning Sunshine from Revolver (1966) and Golden Slumbers at the end of their career from Abbey Road (1969).

Have you been inspired by the Royal Pavilion?

If you have taken a photo of the Royal Pavilion that you are keen to share, post a comment using the form below and paste in the web address.