Classes at the Leicester School of Art started on 1st March 1870 – 149 years ago!
Have you ever wondered how the School of Art became De Montfort University? This chart should help:
Special Collections recently launched an appeal for former staff and students to get in touch with their memories or archive collections ahead of the landmark 150th anniversary next year. We’ve had some wonderful memories:
“The Fletcher Building, Floor 9. Scary paternoster. Always misbehaving and stranding folk in the basement. Or up above the ceiling. You’d hear them calling for help. See just their lower legs or upturned faces. Nah. Nothing doing till the janitor got there.”
(Memory of a student of History of Art, 1985)
We’ve also had a range of items donated to the archive collections, including gig tickets:
About Katharine Short
When I was 13 every careers questionnaire I did at school suggested I become an archivist. In rebellion I studied History of Art at Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute before giving in to the inevitable and undertaking a qualification in Archives Administration at Aberystwyth University. I worked at King’s College London Archives and the London Metropolitan Archives before becoming the Archivist here at DMU in January 2013. My role is hugely varied: answering enquiries and assisting researchers, sorting, cataloguing, cleaning and packaging archival material, managing our environmentally controlled storage areas, giving seminars, talks and tours, researching aspects of University history, liaising with potential donors and advocating for the importance of archives within the organisation. I am one of those incredibly fortunate people who can say ‘I love my job’ and really mean it.
