Arts Week 2023

Professor Joanne Leal welcomes you to Arts Week 2023.

This short film, by the Jarman Lab, uses the words, images and textiles of the period to bring alive the plans and fears of early modern lying in. Leah Astbury, Elma Brenner, Isabel Davis and Sue Wiseman introduce the objects and the stories they tell.

Body Work author Melissa Febos and ‘Sins of My Father’ author Dr Lily Dunn discuss writing about relationships that formed us, bodies, desires and traumas. Chaired by Julia Bell.

Hear first-hand accounts from LGBT+ people about their experiences in their own country and on arrival in the UK, addressing the particular challenges they face going through the UK asylum system.

Workshop exploring the recent explosion in Generative Artificial Intelligence and its potential impact on museums.

Rediscover the lost world of Westminster in a walking tour, looking for the remains and memories of the medieval settlement.

Best-selling author Jo Baker returns to Birkbeck to read from her new novel, The Midnight News - a gripping story of World War II intrigue, love, and danger.

Workshop using archival material from a historic clinical trial involving pregnant women as a springboard for conversations about public health messaging, uncertainty, and risk during pregnancy.

Cutting-edge new performance and film works investigating how and what we see.

Julia Bell reads from her memoir, discusses the process of turning memory into poetry, and answers questions from the audience.

Taking inspiration from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, this interactive workshop considers our connection to trees.

‘Reproduction NOW’ is a panel exploring fertility and reproduction. It is time to take stock. Have promises been delivered? Where have we ended up? What future do we face?

Stories of celebration and resistance from the Wards Corner Latin market.

Live listen of 1941 radio play The City Wears a Slouch Hat, a kaleidoscopic trip across a city with music composed by John Cage and words by avant-garde poet Kenneth Patcham.

A talk on how paintings have been displayed at London’s National Gallery since its foundation in 1824 and what this reveals about taste as well as ideas concerning the purpose of public art galleries.

A walk through the wild side of Renaissance London, starting at Southwark Cathedral and ending at Shakespeare’s Globe.

Work in progress from Birkbeck’s theatre and creative writing students: from workshops to finished pieces, experience the processes and products of our creative factory.

This panel launches Radio Myles, a new podcast produced by Birkbeck's Toby Harris on Irish writer Flann O’Brien / Myles na gCopaleen / Brian O’Nolan.

Acclaimed nature writers Nicola Chester and Nick Acheson join Birkbeck research fellow Michael Warren to discuss the topic of local living.

International two-day symposium exploring the entanglements of architecture and the political and social spheres.

A devised performance with live bread, in response to the life and visions of medieval mystic Margery Kempe.

Experts in urban planning and digital culture ask: what happens when places achieve celebrity status online?

Dramaturgs Emily LeQuesne, Emma Jayne Park and Hanna Slättne talk about different and unusual dramaturgical practices, share their experiences as dramaturgs in the current UK theatre landscape, and discuss the challenges of the industry.

Guided walk visiting places from the past and highlighting the legacy the nineteenth century has left behind.

Author Tim Phillips talks to Birkbeck’s Bill Bowring about his book, The Curtain and the Wall, and his experiences of walking the route of the Iron Curtain and meeting the people whose lives have been shaped by the its presence.

A triple bill of research-led films from the Derek Jarman Lab: The Plastic Phoenix (about the now-defunct Bakelite Museum), Aerial Bodies (about female barrage balloon operators) and Submerged Reliquary of a Kentish Saint (about Derek Jarman’s archive).

Leading scholars on work and writing in seventeenth-century England share their ideas. Join us to hear James Amelang, Jane Whittle, Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin and many more.

Workshop performance exploring the question: does anyone still consider access to theatre to be a right worth fighting for?

Conversation with prolific Singapore-based Filipino writer Victor Fernando R. Ocampo, on his International Rubery Book Award shortlisted collection The Infinite Library and Other Stories, his influences and writing craft, and the state of speculative fiction in Southeast Asia today.

Kodwo Eshun presents a lecture on the aesthetic of Black Industrialism in the work of Trevor Mathison.