If you like all things to do with heritage, then these are interesting times in which we live. For Wales, the Heritage Bill consultation rumbles forward, courting controversy all the time regarding the fate of Cadw and the RCAHMW. The World Heritage Site of Blaenafon is making national headlines as an exemplar for future World Heritage bids across Britain. Meanwhile, Newport finds itself at the centre of verbal brawling and public protests regarding the fate of its ‘heritage’ mural depicting the Chartist rising. Heritage in Wales is certainly not short of interesting issues. Archaeology and history each in turn court their own headlines. The Welsh Government is actively encouraging the extension of Welsh history provision throughout schools, while the country continues to be a rich ground for archaeological discoveries of international significance. Truly, we could not be better placed as a nation to engage with such subject areas and, as a campus, we in Caerleon could not be better placed to explore these issues. It is with these thoughts in mind that we turn attention to a proposed new degree. While the provision of history education in Caerleon has long been established, and before that, archaeological work of global significance (no exaggeration) was conducted at the campus, we are now looking at developing a brand new degree in Heritage, Archaeology and Historical Studies. Looking to build on the respected historical research already maintained in Caerleon, we now want to expand and develop the position of heritage and archaeology in our teaching, reflecting the growing significance for these areas, in national strategies for Wales. However, there is no point in developing something in isolation, and no degree will ever run without people to participate in it. So, today I’m asking you to follow the link below and get involved. I want you to tell us whether or not this degree is something that you would be interested in, or something you would have been interested in had you had the opportunity to engage with it in the past. I want you to tell me what you would want to get out of this degree, what would make it a degree that you would choose above others, and throw yourself into. This is important, whatever your viewpoint, this degree will not happen without your help and input. So please do take the time to fill in the few questions asked, and let anyone you know who has an interest in these areas to get in touch as well. Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated, and please feel free to get in touch through other means if you have any questions. Please find the questionnaire here. (Finally, I've noticed a lot of comments on the questionnaire response form, which is brilliant, that sort of detail is exactly what we want. However, do feel free to post comments here, as well as on the form - only I can't respond to comments on the survey but I can do here - if you want to discuss elements of the proposal that is.)
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Some five years later, and the writing is about there. To my left is a pile of notes, doing its best to cascade off the side of the table. Some three hundred pages, littered with pencil marks indicating a missing letter, a lack of italics, or an incorrect date – and every single one of them has been resolved. This is the fifth time that I have sat down and said ‘that is it’, and resolved to close the edited document for the final time, the fifth and final time it would now appear. While printing, binding, and that whole viva thing are still in the near future, the biggest, most time and soul consuming elements of the PhD process is at an end. So five years on, life may be experienced once again. I have flashbacks to an interview, where I successfully made my case for the bursary that covered the costs of the first few years of the research. The person chairing that interview has since retired, as have at least five other individuals in the University who had some form of significant influence over proceedings at one stage or another. That being said, the University I started my research in does not even exist anymore! This thesis has outlived careers and institutions, such has been the protracted nature of its progress. I bought a house, okay, with a lot of help and others people’s money, but it’s still mine. We had bearded Americans move in, and bearded Americans move out. We went from having no pets, to having three cats, two dogs and as many horses – it would seem that for each year of the thesis the animals incrementally increased in size, a sixth year, while resulting in an overall failure, would surely have had to have been commemorated with the purchase of some manner of domesticated bison. And while we have not quite got married during the period of research, we did get engaged right in the middle of it all – perhaps submission will actually allow for that ceremony now! I started my research in Wales. Before long I had taken tea in the House of Commons, discussed Nazis in the National Museum of Ireland, flown to Iceland with a French documentary filmmaker, then been given a book by every museum professional (there were a lot of them) I met in Iceland, got lost in the wastelands that surround the airport in the capital of Greenland, Nuuk, before distributing Welsh flags in every cultural building that I could find in Greenland. Oh yes, we also went scampering around live volcanoes and narrowly avoided being sunk by increasingly large icebergs, but those are stories for another time. One day, I’ll really need to work out the carbon footprint of the thesis – for a consideration of heritage in Wales, I think it’s going to be surprisingly large. I was in my twenties when I started, and thirties now I’m finishing – which makes the whole process sound a lot longer than it actually was, but equally makes me feel tremendously old. Wales have won two Six Nations championships in that time, and reached a World Cup semi final, while the Lions won a test series, all of which surely bodes well for the viva I’m sure. While I have been able to enjoy some sporting glory, there are lots of other things that I have not been able to enjoy. I don’t even remember the feeling of cold mud under a pillow made from t-shirts, such is the length of time that has passed since I last went to a music festival. Exhibitions have proven to be too far away to be able to justify the time, films too expensive a luxury as the bursary began to run out. Birthday celebrations of loved ones were missed as time became a slave to the whip of editing, and for that, and to each of you who I did not celebrate with, I am sorry, and hope you will let me make up for it with birthdays to come. Yet a week from now, those few hundred pages will have been printed and bound, packaged up and sent away. Life may resume. I’m not sure what will come first, going to rugby matches, booking up some festivals somewhere, catching up on the latest touring exhibition in the British Museum, reading something that is not related to the thesis, or reading something that is not related to the thesis but not feeling terribly guilty about doing so, seeing where computer gaming is after parting ways with it about half way through the thesis, or returning to my beloved kendo and smacking some skulls with bamboo. Maybe, just maybe, sitting down without having to think about what needs correcting in which chapter, will suffice for day 1, there’s plenty of time for catching up on all the other things from day 2 onwards! The end...until the viva... We had a great afternoon on Friday last week. With the new degree programme coming together day by day, we’ve started pitching the programme to prospective student. While numbers might not have been overwhelming, given that it was a soggy day, and this was the very first of the ‘new’ open day events, I think we were pretty happy with the way things went.
For the first time (ever, I think) we have started taking prospective students away from the Caerleon campus, and begun to explore the surrounding environs. It’s providing us with a wonderful opportunity to showcase the resources that we have on our doorstep. Frankly, with the most complete amphitheatre going in the British Isles and a National Museum close at hand, we would be daft not to make the most of such sites, and so we did. I must admit to having spent most of the morning praying that the forecast wet weather would hold off, and for the most part, some deity somewhere decided to look kindly on those requests – I’ll take drizzle over a downpour. The amphitheatre was of course swamped by school children, but in a sense that was ideal. We were not in the amphitheatre to just talk about the archaeological significance of the site, we were also here to discuss heritage. What better way to illustrate the ongoing social significance of this site than to have it overrun by enthusiastic school children? It might not have been the quietest of places to discuss a new degree, but who cared, the site was alive and being used – that is the really important thing. Brief visits into the National Roman Legion Museum and nearby baths offered an audible contrast, where we were among the only people inside the respective sites. Fortuitous timing perhaps, ten minutes either way and we would probably have been drowned out by the very same school party. Still, silence allowed us to discuss some interesting themes, such as the ethics of displaying human remains, and the use of visual projections in the baths, all examples that will come up in sessions on the degree. ‘Situated learning’ we like to call it, and it works very well. While wandering around a University is all well and good, there is probably only so much that a campus can tell you about a degree programme. By going off site, and into the archaeological source material, we can show off what we do, and of course what we might use in the future given the vast amount of untouched archaeology west of the fortress complex. I don’t know if we won over any future students, but at the very least I think everyone there enjoyed the experience and that, at the very least, should be an important component of any degree. A good start then, and hopefully more to come! (Special thanks go to Mark and Gareth for helping out on the day - it was not planned, but they really helped, and we forgive Mark for yawning at the worst possible moment!) |
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