Welcome to the Solway Centre for Environment and Culture and to our new blog. The Centre, which is part of the University of Glasgow and based at its Dumfries Campus, has been running for almost 3 years, and we’ve had a great array of projects over that time (information on our website www.gla.ac.uk/solwaycentre or via twitter @SolwayCentre) around three themes: landscape, memory & place; rural land use & land management and sustainable rural tourism.
We are a collection of academics from the University of Glasgow and beyond, including natural scientists, folklorists, anthropologists, literary critics, ecologists, historians and geographers, working together to develop interdisciplinary projects as well as ones that reflect our disciplinary interests.
Last week, for instance, I was in Whithorn, working to build a new European project which is going for funding to look at pilgrimage, modern and traditional—we have partners in Latvia, Slovenia and Croatia, as well as at Heriot-Watt—and it’s proving an exciting and worthwhile initiative. It builds on previous work we did, funded by Third Sector Internships, Scotland, and in partnership with the Whithorn Trust (www.whithorn.com) that led to a report on ‘The Whithorn Pilgrimage’ (www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_335306_en.pdf).
We’re also considering a new project, for 2015, on the regional traditions of SW Scotland around food—and I’ve an article on that in the new SCRR Newsletter (18, Spring 2015) www.scrr.ac.uk.
I’m working, too, on developing our forthcoming events’ programme—on 26th/27th June we’re hosting a symposium on Scottish Children’s Literature, in association with Peter Pan Moat Brae Trust (www.peterpanmoatbrae.org) and the University of Edinburgh, which includes a live reading by Scottish Youth Theatre of J.M. Barrie’s first play Bandelero the Bandit, which Ronnie Jack recently published in The Earliest Plays of J.M. Barrie http://www.amazon.co.uk/Earliest-Plays-J-Barrie-Bandelero/dp/1846220416/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427196481&sr=8-1&keywords=bandelero+the+bandit
The draft programme on Children’s Literature—including a tour of Moat Brae (the garden inspired Barrie to write Peter Pan is about to go live at www.gla.ac.uk/schools/interdisciplinary/research/solwaycentre/scottishchildrensliterature
We also have the University Chancellor, Sir Kenneth Calman, coming in May to talk about A Doctor’s Line: Poetry and Prescriptions in Health and Wellbeing and information on that is at http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/interdisciplinary/research/solwaycentre/events/headline_393917_en.html including how to book on Eventbrite.
Valentina Bold, Director of the Solway Centre for Environment and Culture