To Initiate the Memory Maps project a group of leading contemporary writers were asked to begin the process of writing about Essex. They have responded to different works and images in a range of media: drawings, watercolours, oil sketches and portraits, as well as embroideries and wall-paper, clothes, silverware and carvings. It is hoped that they will inspire you to start making your own memory maps.
Memory Maps: Grayson Perry's autobiography by Wendy Jones
Grayson Perry, the potter, was born and grew up in Essex - in Bicken Acre, Great Bardfield and Chelmsford. Wendy Jones met Grayson in 1999 at a therapy group. They became f…
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Memory Maps: 'A Writer's Day-Book' by Ronald Blythe
Two excerpts from 'A Writer's Day-Book', by Ronald Blythe
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Memory Maps: 'Elm' by Robert Macfarlane
John Constable loved trees as he loved people. His friend C. R. Leslie remembered that he had often seen Constable 'admire a fine tree with an ecstasy of delight like that …
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Memory Maps: 'Mud Language' by Michèle Roberts
Every morning I walked in to work from the nearby village of Wivenhoe where I rented a room from a sad widow. I was a widow myself, in a manner of speaking (a divorce is a …
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Memory Maps: 'Francis Bacon in Wivenhoe' by Marina Warner
The row of cottages in Queens Road runs up the hill and marks the end of the tarmacked road and the beginning of the bumpy stony track that winds through the village toward…
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Memory Maps: 'Clouds of Memory' by Lisa Appignanesi
Sometime in the spring of 1971, I travelled to Essex. It was a long journey. I came from New York, from dank east village streets where the young runaways clad the oily pav…
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Memory Maps: 'Brent Hall' by Richard Humphreys
Brent Hall lies quietly isolated in open Essex fields and has a poignant story to tell of religion, politics, poetry, friendship, betrayal, persecution and great personal m…
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Memory Maps: 'The Edge of the Orison: In the Traces of John Clare's 'Journey Out of Essex'' by Iain Sinclair
Early on the morning of the 16th of July, 1837, Clare was led away from his wife and children, by two stern-looking men, who placed him in a small carriage and drove rapidl…
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Memory Maps: 'Estuary Lines: An essay on the Essex coastline' by Ken Worpole
In January 2005 I was contacted by the photographer Jason Orton asking if I would collaborate with him on a new project. He had been commissioned to produce a series of pho…
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Memory Maps: About the project
The Memory Maps project is about people and their relationship with place. It is about objects that are associated with particular areas as well as prints and paintings of …
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Folk Archive: Contemporary Popular Art from the UK
If Pop Art is about liking things, as Andy Warhol said, then folk art is about loving things - Jeremy Deller. This is a book about the creative life o…
Buy nowEvent - Howard Goodall: The Story of Music
Mon 10 June 2013 18:30
Emmy, BRIT and BAFTA awardwinning composer Howard Goodall is responsible for writing some of the most iconic scores in British film and television – including The Vicar of Dibley, QI, Red Dwarf and Blackadder.
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