‘The Song of Arms and a Man’ at Charterhouse

by Sheila Conway

When one of our members suggested to the committee that we find a local venue to host The Latin Qvarter’s production, ‘The Song of Arms and a Man’, we didn’t know what we were undertaking. As we understood it, we were being asked to find a venue and book hotel accommodation for the performers, then advertise the event locally and to Guildford Classical Association (GCA) members. This was what generally happened when we arranged for speakers to come and talk to our local audiences.

We contacted local schools who often host our events for us. As expected, since the performance was scheduled for a Saturday evening, day schools were unable to help. However, Charterhouse very kindly offered to host the event in their beautiful Great Hall. Their Head of Classics, Jonathan Nelmes, was enthusiastic and planned to organise a whole ‘Virgil week’ at school prior to the performance, which was to be the culminating event.

We booked accommodation nearby for the performers and thought our part in the organisation of the event was largely over, bar a bit of advertising. How wrong we were! Our real work was only just beginning. It was at this point that it dawned on us that we were responsible for pricing and selling tickets as well as all the publicity, and, most scarily, responsible for footing the bill if the event made a loss! 

As we began to comprehend just what we had undertaken, we had serious misgivings. After all, a performance of the Aeneid, much of it in Latin, has very niche appeal. How many people these days still study Latin, or feel up to a whole evening of it? Many of those for whom Latin was a fundamental part of their education are now so elderly that they think twice about going off to a performance at night, particularly at a distant venue in the countryside. On the plus side, Virgil’s Aeneid is a central part of the syllabus at GCSE, A Level and university, for both Latin and Class Civ students. And how better to get an understanding of the whole story than by watching a live performance, hearing the beautiful sonority of the Latin and experiencing at first hand the depths of emotion in this very human story? We couldn’t deny this opportunity to our local students, teachers and classics enthusiasts.

Having decided to go ahead with the venture, our next job was pricing the tickets and working out what concessions we could offer. This was much harder than it sounds. We had good estimates of costs from The Latin Qvarter and Charterhouse, but how many of our members would come? And how many local schools would arrange to bring groups of students? Would university students travel all the way from London, Reading and Southampton? In short, would we have an audience of two hundred, or only forty?

It is at this point that we were helped enormously by the Classical Association and the Roman Society, who both gave us generous grants towards the costs of the performance, and by the businessman, Richard Balfour, who very kindly agreed to underwrite the event. We are extremely grateful to all three, without whose generosity we would probably not have dared to go ahead.

It was hard work finding and approaching contacts at different universities and local organisations who might be willing to help publicise the event, as well as distributing posters and leaflets and informing our own members and local schools. George Sharpley at The Latin Qvarter was very helpful, providing an eye-catching leaflet and making sure we didn’t miss a trick on the advertising.

The performance was due to take place at Charterhouse on Saturday, 5^th October. As the day approached, we were increasingly worried. Several schools which had originally wanted to bring large numbers of students were, for various reasons, unable to come. A fortnight before the performance we had still only sold about seventy tickets; we were on course to make a loss of over £2,000. Then ticket sales started to improve, and finally some schools confirmed bookings. On the night, we had an audience approaching a hundred and seventy – a record for this event. Our finances were safe, but we sold right out of programmes and had to disappoint some. 

At last the players: George Sharpley (narrator), Emma Kirkby, Victoria Punch (standing in at short notice for the indisposed Elizabeth Donnelly), Matthew Hargreaves, Llewellyn Morgan and Eileen Zoratti, assembled and the performance began. The audience was hushed and expectant as the piper, Callum Armstrong, got everyone’s attention. How exciting to hear a real aulos player! The English narrative beautifully echoed the original Latin and set the scene for the Latin extracts. It was entrancing seeing such well-known passages brought to life - acted out and performed in impressively fluent and expressive spoken Latin. 

There was a real buzz during the interval while everyone enjoyed welcome refreshments before settling down to the emotional finale of the tale. All too quickly, the performance was over, bows and curtain calls were taken, and the audience departed. As they left, we heard a huge number of compliments about the production. The audience were obviously thrilled by the performance and very glad that they had come. In that moment we knew we had been right to keep our nerve, and all the work beforehand seemed worthwhile.

Sheila Conway is the Hon. Secretary of the Guildford branch of the Classical Association.  See here for further details of  the branch.

See here for further information about The Latin Qvarter and 'The Song of Arms and a Man'. 

The CA Guildford Branch

by Marian Wernham

The GCA was set up over 40 years ago with the aim of fostering interest in the Classics in our community. We are an active branch, offering a range of activities throughout the academic year for students, teachers and those with a general interest in Classics.  We have about 90 members, many of whom are current or retired teachers as well as students and interested members of the public.

Our annual programme begins with an Opening Lecture, which is free to anyone and always well attended. A notable speaker (often the author of a recently-published book) is invited to talk about his/her subject. We have been privileged in the past to welcome such famous names as Mary Beard, Michael Scott, Natalie Haynes and Tom Holland, amongst others, and this year our President, Professor Edith Hall, spoke to us about how Aristotle’s ‘Ethics’ can guide us through 21^st Century life. A second public lecture is arranged for the summer term.

Professor Edith Hall addressing the GCA at the

Opening Lecture © Ian Peel

In October Dr Mary Harlow from Leicester spoke engagingly to pupils in Years 6-9 on ‘Unravelling the Roman toga’, and in November sixth-formers were fascinated to hear Professor Tim Whitmarsh from Cambridge explaining the evidence he had found for the ways Homer might have been performed in antiquity.

In January we organise a half-day conference for about 100 GCSE students, providing them and their teachers with the opportunity to learn from academics covering the wider context of two of their literature set texts. This year we welcomed Professor Matthew Leigh of St. Anne’s College, Oxford (a long-standing friend of GCA), who gave us his insights into the Virgil text, and Dr Dunstan Lowe from Kent who talked about Boudicca and The Druids.

A major event each year is our popular Classical Reading Competition, at which about 100 students ranging from Years 6 - 13 from local schools battle it out in playlets, dialogues and solo recitations in Latin or Greek, according to their age group.  Four experienced judges have the unenviable task of awarding prizes and certificates based on accuracy and expression.

We are indebted to the CA for the generous grant that they provide for this event, which enables us to give worthwhile prizes and a welcome tea to all attending, and similarly for another competition which we have inaugurated in recent years - a Classical knowledge ‘Certamen’ run on the lines of those in the USA. This, too, is proving increasingly popular with students.

Occasional self-help Teach Meets enable teaching staff to share ideas and issues about developments in the syllabus and good teaching practice.

We were delighted this year to support the Surbiton High School Parthenon Casts project, and soon we hope to offer a bursary to a deserving student wishing to attend one of the summer schools.

More details of our activities can be found at https://guildfordca.wordpress.com/. Do come and join us – you’d be very welcome!

Marian Wernham

Membership Secretary, GCA

For information about your nearest branch, see the CA website:

https://classicalassociation.org/branches.html

News from the CA's Southampton branch

by Jacqui Meredith

Here in Southampton we have a busy programme of events and social occasions throughout the year, including a Saturnalia in January and a Prandium in July, both hosted by members. We also run an annual Latin and Greek Reading Competition for schools, including a Minimus category. Our membership spans beyond Southampton itself, incorporating Winchester, Portsmouth and even eastern Dorset, as well as much of surrounding Hampshire.

We have six lectures over the year and have been lucky to entertain a variety of excellent speakers, including Professor Michael Scott, Charlotte Higgins and the late James Morwood. This last year our programme began with Dr Eoghan Moloney of the University of Winchester, who delivered an engaging argument on the ways in which Classical Greek authors and modern scholars have interpreted the Macedonians and their leaders.  We also welcomed Harry Sidebottom, author and academic, who led us with great gusto through ‘The Third Century Crisis of Rome’, which provides the background to his Warrior of Rome and Throne of the Caesars novels.  Dr Will Wootton of King’s College London then gave a highly informative and very different lecture on ‘Making Ancient Mosaics, from Hellenistic to Roman’, taking us on a visual trek around the Roman world. There followed ‘Stesichorus and the Reshaping of Homeric Myth’ given by Professor Patrick Finglass of the University of Bristol, which presented an attractive picture of the poet in his time and place. The year was rounded-off with an erudite and thought-provoking look at ‘The Many and the One: Oedipus, Dionysus, Democracy and Tragedy’ by Professor Barbara Goff from the University of Reading.

We have an exciting programme lined up for 2018-19, including lectures by Professor Armand d’Angour, Daisy Dunn and Dr Emma Aston. In November we are organising a Classics Conference for Schools. This will include a day of lectures for older pupils, to be given by Professor Edith Hall, Dr John Pearce and Professor Paul Cartledge, and a morning of workshops on the Romans and Greeks for younger students, including a literacy workshop with the author Maz Evans. We are delighted to have the University of Southampton on board to help with workshops and stalls.

Anyone is welcome to come along to our meetings and details can be found on our programme at https://thesouthamptonbranchoftheclassicalassociation.wordpress.com/. Events are also posted on the calendar on the CA website.

Jacqui Meredith

Honorary Secretary of the Southampton branch of the Classical Association

Lytham St Annes Classical Association: looking ahead after the first three years

by Jayne Kelly

The Lytham St Annes branch of the Classical Association was founded three years ago by seventeen-year old Katrina Kelly, the youngest person to ever form a CA branch. The branch needed 85 members to break even - quite a tall order in an area without a university or state school teaching Latin, Greek or Ancient History in the area. It soon transpired, however, that there were hundreds of ‘closet classicists’ as the branch soon became the largest in the UK, with a current membership of 378 members, including 127 students.

Dr Michael Scott is the branch’s inspiring President, fully supporting the branch’s many outreach activities and delivering his annual Presidential Lecture to enthusiastic audiences each January.  The branch has seven lectures a year; a Junior and Senior Schools Classics Competition, where student finalists deliver presentations on that year’s theme; a Classics Ambassadors initiative where students promote classics and the CA in their local schools and communities; and the Classics Summer School Bursary Awards which enable local students to attend the CAHH Summer School at Repton every year. This year the branch has launched its Summer Treasure Hunt with members going on a ‘Book Dig’ to find classics books for the branch’s bookstall.  This aims to raise money for books for local schools who are studying Latin and/or Classical Civilisation for the first time, due to the excellent work of the Blackpool Hub of Classics for All.

Chair Katrina Kelly reflects upon the LSA branch’s third year:

"We have once again enjoyed a great programme of lectures that has led us on a geographical odyssey around the ancient world, and we have certainly followed our President Dr Michael Scott’s advice to take a globalised view of history. In March, we reached an exciting milestone by welcoming our largest audience to date with over three hundred people hearing celebrated broadcaster Dr Michael Wood retrace the steps of Alexander’s journey to the East. 

At our annual Celebration Evening in June, Dr Scott commended the ‘incredible audiences, intriguing questions, endless enthusiasm and stunning tea and cakes!’ at the branch’s meetings.  None of this would be possible without our dedicated band of volunteers aged from 9 to 90, and our student Classics Ambassadors.

Natalie Haynes with LSA Classics Ambassadors and student members from Runshaw College

To celebrate this work, over eighty of us took over a local restaurant on a cold January night and enjoyed excellent food, company and a themed quiz in our growing classics community.

This year, our popular raffle has helped us raise £1000 for our Summer School Bursary Fund which enabled six students to attend the CAAH Summer School at Repton in July.

As we continue to forge relationships with schools and organisations across Lancashire, we have extended our outreach work and increased our profile amongst young people. In March, seventeen-year old Harvey Phythian of Runshaw College won our second annual Classics Competition (where the finalists impressed a large audience with their winning presentations about figures from the ancient world) with his excellent presentation on Diogenes the Cynic, whilst nine-year old Jonah Crouch of AKS Lytham won the competition for younger pupils. Plans to extend our junior classics competition to other local schools are underway and we are also preparing a festival to mark our fifth year in 2019.

Above: Katharine Backler, (left) University of Oxford, judge of LSA Classics Competition for Senior Schools 2017 with finalists and winner, and Katrina Kelly, (right) Chair, LSA CA

Below: Judge Katrina Kelly, Chair of LSA CA, with finalists and winner of the Junior Classics Competition 2017

We welcome guest bloggers to write short articles for our website (www.lsaclassics.com), which are linked to the theme of the month’s lecture or explore the writer’s enthusiasm for the ancient world. Recent examples include theatre reviews, updates on university open days and a report on a trip to Vindolanda by a group of interested members.

We hope that more trips further afield can be arranged in the near future and we now look forward to 2017-18 when we welcome more excellent speakers, including Professor Joann Fletcher, Lindsey Davis and Dr Margaret Mountford, to Lytham St Annes.

We would like to extend our thanks to the Classical Association, and in particular to Barbara Finney, for their ongoing support and for a grant to help fund our Classics Competition. We are very excited about our plans for the next three years and if you would like to get involved in any way at all, then please contact us as we’d love to hear from you!”

Jayne Kelly is the Secretary of the Lytham St Annes branch of the Classical Association, and can be contacted at lsaclassics@gmail.com

Bristol Classics Hub (South West): reflecting on our first year

by Hannah Walsh

The Bristol Classics Hub was set up in September 2016 to support the development of classical subjects in state schools in the South West. Funded by Classics for All and the Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition and delivered in partnership with the University of Bristol, the hub aims to widen access to Classics by offering a powerful and stable focus for regional development.

Prior to establishing the hub, we carried out preliminary research in June 2016 to gauge the level of interest among headteachers and teachers in local primary and secondary schools regarding the introduction of classical subjects. The results were very positive, with several schools expressing interest in accessing training and mentoring support for their own staff.

Spurred on by this enthusiasm, we decided to move away from the model of student-led Classics classes and clubs (which is used with great success and impact in other hubs) and to focus instead on training non-specialist teachers in schools to lead the introduction of Classics. This shift was driven by our vision that the Bristol hub would play a role in empowering the teachers as well as the young people within each school.

Building strong relationships with individual teachers and departments has therefore been central to the work of the hub this year. By visiting partner schools at regular intervals and responding promptly to teachers’ questions, we have tried to support schools in a more personalised manner. In doing so, it’s become clear that there is no blueprint for the way in which Classics can be introduced into schools; different approaches will work best in different contexts. Therefore, we aim to remain flexible and responsive to the curricular needs or restraints of individual schools at all times.

In practical terms, the hub consists of a 0.3 FTE project co-ordinator who is responsible for liaising with schools, managing day-to-day hub activity and facilitating training. The co-ordinator is supported by Dr Genevieve Liveley and Dr William Guast in the Department of Classics and Ancient History. 

In the space of 10 months, the Bristol Classics Hub has quickly established itself as an important part of the Classics educational community in the South West.  We have:

• Built up strong relationships with local schools and worked closely with 11 secondary schools and eight primary schools, many in areas of high deprivation;
• Trained over 60 non-specialist primary and secondary teachers to teach Latin, Greek and Classical  Civilisation on a sustainable basis;
•  Organised a GCSE and A Level Classical Civilisation conference which attracted over 80 students  from schools across the region;
• Provided a range of enrichment events and school workshops for pupils aged 5-18.

In the new 2017-18 academic year, over 1,500 students in 14 schools will either have the opportunity to study a classical subject for the first time or to study a greater range of classical subjects.

We have been delighted (and at times overwhelmed!) by the level of demand for Classics within the local state sector. Yet there is no question that the success of the hub over the past year is a testament to the ambition and enthusiasm of committed teachers across the region who have had the courage to embrace Classics and make it work in their own individual contexts in innovative, exciting and powerful new ways.

As the Bristol Classics Hub enters into its second year, we hope to build on this enthusiasm and provide regular opportunities for teachers (in both state and independent sectors) and academics to learn from each other and share good practice through the introduction of Classics ‘Teach Meet’ events and the development of a peer-to-peer mentoring network. We also hope to widen the geographical scope of the hub this year to ensure that as many teachers as possible from across the South West can participate in the network.

In 2017-18, our expanded programme of events will include opportunities for students to demonstrate their Classics learning in fun and creative ways. For example, KS2 & KS3 students will be able to participate in the Latin play competition, run in collaboration with the local branch of the CA in Bristol, and Year 7 students from seven local schools will be involved in our new ‘Ovid in the West Country’ competition.

Following on from the success of our first Classical Civilisation conference for GCSE and A Level students in March 2017, this event will be held again in March 2018 with increased capacity so that more students can attend. In preparation, we will be formalising our training programme for the University of Bristol student volunteers who will be running plenary and break-out sessions for school students during the course of the conference. University academics will deliver lectures at this event and will also provide a series of six talks over the course of the Autumn term to Year 12 and 13 students who are participating in new Classics and Ancient History stream within the University’s Access to Bristol scheme.

The hub is delighted to have received a further three years’ funding and support from Classics for All, IGRCT and the University of Bristol. In the coming years, we hope to develop our existing relationships with schools in Bristol, Bath, Gloucestershire and North Somerset and to build up the infrastructure for Classics in more rural parts of the South West. By creating an environment where schools can draw on local expertise and help one another to embed Classics in the curriculum, we aim to foster the growth of Classics teaching and ensure that classical subjects can put down permanent roots in the curriculum plans of the region’s schools.

For more details about the Bristol Classics Hub, our aims, and how to get involved, as well as blog posts with more detailed reports from many of our events, please visit our website.  A more extensive article about the work of the hub will be published in the Journal of Classics Teaching, Issue 36 (Autumn 2017).

Hannah Walsh co-ordinates the Bristol Classics Hub and Classics for All’s Electra Programme which supports schools to introduce or develop the teaching of Ancient Greek language and culture. She has taught English and Classics in both state and private schools in the South West and is currently studying part-time for a Master’s degree in Education Policy and International Development. You can contact her at: h.walsh@bristol.ac.uk

The Manchester CA Schools' Scheme

by Sam Fernes

In May 2014, the then Chair of the Manchester and District branch of the Classical Association, David Langslow, called an extraordinary meeting, asking members and interested parties to address a single, fundamental question: “What kind of organisation do we want to be?”   A desire to support Classics in an outward-facing and meaningful way was immediately obvious, and this energetic response would prove to have a galvanising effect …

With kind support from the national charity Classics for All, the branch went into partnership with the University of Manchester, together with a number of brave schools which were willing to listen to the exciting opportunities held out by this small band of classicists.  The premise of the project was that branch members, academics, students, and other volunteers would take Latin classes into state schools which had no previous experience of the language, thereby offering pupils the linguistic skills that result from learning Latin.  Tutors would receive training before their placements and full support from an experienced mentor throughout.  From the first, the watchword of the project was to be Sustainability: the aim was to introduce Latin in such a way that, by the start of year three, participating schools would have assumed responsibility for its provision, with ongoing support from the project. Teachers would be taught enough Latin over the course of two years to ensure that they could take Latin classes themselves the following year.  And everybody involved would have fun!

Taking the project from concept to sustainable reality remains the most challenging aspect.  Enrolling schools which were prepared to take the step of offering Latin to their students, a subject that most had never considered an option, was a relatively easy first step. The project attracted immediate interest from nine local schools, including Mauldeth Road Primary School, Burnage Academy for Boys and Levenshulme High School, all of which embraced the opportunity whole-heartedly. The range and breadth of interested and engaged tutors was also a real boon. Many of the tutors were students from the University of Manchester, some of whom have since gone on to pursue careers in teaching Classics, but the project has also been fortunate enough to attract capable enthusiasts from outside the university.

In September 2016 the project reached the crucial halfway point of its initial two-year grant. At that stage, ten schools were involved, five primary and five secondary. With one partner school now entering its pupils for Latin GCSE, and with new schools still seeking to become involved, this is an exciting time for Classics in the North West.  The groundwork is also being laid to meet a long-term ambition, that of introducing the North’s first ever PGCE in Classics, even if much work remains before that goal can be accomplished.

If you would like to contribute to these efforts as a tutor, or if you are a teacher who would like to know more about the MCfA project, please see our video ‘Classics for All at the University of Manchester', or contact the project co-ordinator, Jessica Coatesworth, by email at jessica.coatesworth@manchester.ac.uk.   You can also visit the project’s website here.

The branch would like to thank all tutors for their generosity of time and spirit, all teachers and pupils involved for their willing engagement, and of course the project’s benefactors, Classics for All.

Sam Fernes is a PhD student in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Manchester, and is Secretary of the CA’s Manchester and District branch.