Week 3: The Medieval Graffiti Talk

Colin, talking about medieval graffiti

Thank you once again to everyone who made the effort to turn out on another cold day to meet and learn together. I gave a talk about Norfolk's recently discovered medieval graffiti, and about the work of the Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey, that I volunteer for. As I think I conveyed, for me, the two main things that draw me to study this area are:
(i) the material we are finding is, generally, made by people outside of the elite in medieval society (a useful corrective)
(ii) there is something very special to me about knowing you are standing where someone one stood hundreds of years previously

Knowing, as I do, something about the composition of the group, it was really pleasing to me to recognise a diverse range of people in the group. I was talking to one man who attended earlier today, and he said that, ordinarily, he would never have had the confidence to join a history club. However, having made that first step, he is really enjoying it. Although I didn't announce his presence, we were also very fortunate to have a Professor Joel Rosenthal in the audience. Joel is a medieval historian from Stony Brook University in America, and was very interested in the innovative graffiti project, and has promised to email me lots of questions. 

For those who are interested in becoming more actively involved, I am currently trying to organise a training session at one of the city's churches in the New Year (hopefully, St Peter Mancroft). Volunteers who undertake this will then be 'equipped' to join the survey team at Norwich Cathedral - which, I promise, is going to be very interesting indeed. I will let you know about this once I have confirmation of the date. 

Selections from the session feedback:
"Wonderful and very clear to understand."
"It was good to hear about 'people's history'!"
"I could relate to some of the reasoning why people would draw graffiti in those times. We are not so different from those people..."

Best Wishes,
Colin

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