Some of our favourite exhibitions, past and present, can be found in different locations throughout the country.

Displays leading on from Chinese and British, an exhibition currently running here in St Pancras, can be seen in our partner libraries across the UK. Marvellous and Mischievous: Literature's Young Rebels has recently come to York Art Gallery, and Paddington: the Story of a Bear will be appearing in a new location later this year.

 

Chinese and British

© Henry W and Albert A Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library.

Chinese communities have been calling the UK home for much longer than many realise. Tracing their heritage back to regions in East and South-East Asia, they’ve established a rich and diverse culture across the UK.

Chinese and British is currently at our partner libraries across the country, taking its lead from our current exhibition here at St Pancras. Reflect on this long history through photographs, manuscripts and interviews with those who have lived through it. Head to one of our partner libraries to see these bespoke displays augmented with local collections, stories and events.

Find out more.

 

Marvellous and Mischievous: Literature's Young Rebels

Zog © Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, 2010

Anyone can be a rebel, whether they are standing up for their beliefs, saving the planet or battling against the odds. See how characters from Pippi Longstocking to Princess Pearl break rules and defy conventions to make the world a better place for others.

Marvellous and Mischievous was originally opened here in St Pancras in 2019, and has since been touring around the country. After visiting Devon and Suffolk last year, the exhibition’s latest stop is at the York Art Gallery, where it will stay until June.

Showcasing around 40 books, manuscripts and original artwork, this family-friendly exhibition includes a diverse range of rebels, outsiders and spirited survivors from children’s literature spanning more than 300 years, inviting visitors to rediscover their favourite characters, as well as meeting new ones.

Find out more.

 

Paddington: the Story of a Bear

His heart-warming exploits and kind and caring nature have made Paddington one of the world’s most loved bears since his first appearance on the pages of A Bear Called Paddington. More than 60 years on, his stories still delight people of all ages around the world.

The exhibition will be hosted somewhere new this summer after journeying to Hitchin and Carlisle last year, originally appearing at the Library in 2021. Keep an eye out for the announcement soon! Fans, both big and small, can once again join Paddington as he sets off on a new adventure.

 

LibraryOn is a digital platform that connects public libraries and people. It celebrates what libraries do and what people love about them. To help raise the profile of libraries, LibraryOn also manages a £1.1m grant programme which will help public libraries in England improve their online presence and discoverability. The LibraryOn team – who are based at the British Library – update on the roll-out of this new programme.

The first stage of the LibraryOn digital grants programme will kick off on 1 March 2023. From this date we’ll be inviting library services in England to submit an Expression of Interest form outlining their initial ideas for a funded project.

This programme has been developed following a range of conversations with public libraries around the country on how it can be most relevant and useful. It will fund initiatives that make it easier for the public to find, discover, explore and access the range of services libraries offer. Projects could include upgrading existing websites or online offers and services, or piloting something brand new.

The grants will range from £10,000 to £70,000 and will be offered to applicants across the country to ensure geographical balance and will ensure it benefits a range of library services from small to large, rural to urban, and those with varied levels of digital literacy and activity. Any statutory library service in England is welcome to apply, including those run by mutuals, trusts and charities. Applications need to come from the service itself, rather than from individual branch libraries within it. Services can also apply as a consortium. The funding is for capital activity and requires applicants to confirm with their finance teams that the grant expenditure can be capitalised.

The grants are part of the wider LibraryOn programme of work and share the overall goal of increasing physical and digital footfall to public libraries by making it easier to find out about what they offer and engage with them online. While the LibraryOn website aims to provide a ‘shop window’ for public libraries at the national level, the grants will enable digital interventions at the local level. Together, they will begin to establish an effective and user-friendly digital ecosystem for the library sector where existing and new users alike can easily discover and access all that libraries have to offer.

Following sector feedback, the whole application process has been designed to be as light touch as possible to encourage a wide range of applications and to minimise impact on applicants. The initial Expression of Interest form will ask three simple questions about the project proposal and will be open for four weeks. Once these forms have been reviewed by a panel, including our LibraryOn team and others from the sector, invited applicants will be asked to submit a full application including more detail on their planned activity, expenditure and the intended outcomes. Applicants will find out if they have been successful by early summer and have six months to complete their projects.

Grant programme timeline:

1 March 2023: Application portal opens for Expressions of Interest
29 March 2023, 9am: Deadline for Expressions of Interest
12 April 2023: Applicants are informed whether they are invited to submit a full application
13 April 2023: Full application stage opens
15 May 2023: Deadline for full applications
31 May 2023: Applicants are informed whether their application was successful
12 June 2023: Project delivery period begins
22 December 2023: Project delivery period ends

The link to the application portal will be shared on LibraryOn.org/grants.

If you work in the public library sector and have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us at [email protected]. You can also email us to subscribe to our sector newsletter for regular updates.

Article by Jill Brown, Digital Grants Manager

Every year, we invite staff across the Library to propose new research themes for our Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) programme, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC). CDP projects are created to reflect our wider strategic commitments to Living Knowledge, and offer exciting opportunities to bring under-researched collection areas to the fore.

In this blog we will meet three of our recent CDP students, Dominic Bridge, Jodie Collins and Naomi Oppenheim, and learn about their research projects. Find out more by watching their short video case studies.

Dominic Bridge

Dominic has a CDP studentship between the British Library and the University of Liverpool. His research focuses on music publishing in the 18th and 19th centuries, capitalising on the breadth and depth of our collections in this area. He shows how scores and musical manuscripts reflect the culture in which they were made, and particularly attitudes like patriotism and social expectations of women . Dominic benefited from many professional development opportunities during his CDP.

“Working on the [Beethoven] exhibition at the Library was a great opportunity … and I would not have the opportunity to do that anywhere else.”

Jodie Collins

Jodie shared her partnership with the University of Sussex, researching American political pamphlets published in between 1917 and 1945. Her CDP has offered her the chance to work with the Marx Memorial Library as well, and give people beyond academia an insight into what is available at the Library, and why our collections are important. Jodie enjoyed the public facing aspect of research that the Library offers.

“Doing a CDP is unparalleled in terms of access to resources … It’s kind of like the voyage of discovery.”

Naomi Oppenheim

Naomi was a CDP student based at University College London. Her research is about Caribbean publishing since the early 19th century, and specifically Latin-Caribbean publishing in post-war Britain. She was supported in engaging broader audiences, working on the ‘Caribbean Foodways’ project which emphasises the importance of food in understanding Caribbean culture through oral history interviews, which have been deposited in the Library’s Sound Archive. She also helped to develop the Windrush exhibition in 2018.

“Having that opportunity to funnel my research into a public facing exhibition is a once in a lifetime experience.”

These videos demonstrate how CDPs enable great opportunities in research and engagement for the Library, beyond just the topic of the individual PhDs. They are vital for bringing together researchers, curators, and members of the public, and stimulating future research.

To be added to the mailing list for our quarterly research e-newsletter, where you can find out about future PhD opportunities, please contact [email protected]

Saad Hujaleh

Research Information and Communication Apprentice