Welcome to the Arts and Heritage Team Blog

Katharine, Kate and Elizabeth form the Arts and Heritage Team at DMU. Through this blog we aim to share with you the varied and exciting work we are doing to promote the arts and heritage of DMU!

Elizabeth is the Heritage Centre Coordinator. Scheduled to open in March 2015, the Heritage Centre showcases DMU’s past through permanent and temporary exhibitions, while celebrating its present through contributions from current staff and students. At the heart of the Centre are the Arches, ruins from the Church of the Annunciation which once stood on the site of the Hawthorn Building.

Kate is the Arts Collection Coordinator. DMU has a varied collection of artworks by staff, students and honorands, past and present. Kate ensures that this artwork is displayed throughout the campus, as well as creating art trails, liaising with arts organisations and organising loans to local galleries, including New Walk.

Katharine is the university Archivist with responsibility for the care of DMU’s historic records, which date back to 1870 and include student registers, committee minutes, photographs, prospectuses, building plans, annual reports, events brochures and administrative files.

View from Hawthorn by Headmaster Benjamin Fletcher, 1912

The header image is by Benjamin Fletcher, headmaster of the Leicester School of Art from 1900 to 1920. The view shows many familiar buildings including St Mary de Castro, the Turret Gateway, Wyggeston’s Chantry House and Newarke Houses Museum, and the Magazine Gateway. It dates to 1912 and was probably taken from the Hawthorn Building.

Prospectus-featuring-design-based-on-the-Leicester-coat-of-arms-1926024.jpg

The background image is a detail from the 1926 City of Leicester College of Arts and Crafts Prospectus. The design is based on the Leicester coat of arms.

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.
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