Special: Dickens 200
Dear Robert
As you may already know, 2012 is a very important year for the city in terms of establishing our literary identity, particularly as Portsmouth is one of the central partners in the national Charles Dickens bicentenary celebrations.
The Dickens 2012 festival year is an international celebration of the cultural, social and educational legacy of the life and work of Charles Dickens, marking the bicentenary of his birth in Portsmouth.
As the city of his birth Portsmouth is at the very heart of these celebrations. There are events and activities taking place all across the city, in our major venues and in local community halls and schools. It is our aspiration to bring a touch of Dickens into the lives of every resident this year and to create a sense of local pride for the enduring legacy this great writer left behind.
The Cultural Services are all involved in creating and managing this exciting programme, which is being co-ordinated by the city’s Literature Development Officer, Dom Kippin. As well as working with Ros Hardiman in the Museums and Records Service, and with Lindy Elliott in Libraries the range of exciting projects has brought in partners from services across Portsmouth City Council.
The city is going to be filled with an exciting range of events for all audiences, and on Dickens’s birthday, February 7th the eyes of the world will turn to Old Commercial Road and the small terraced house he was born in. The traditional wreath laying ceremony will take place at the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum in the morning, with the Lord Mayor, representatives of the Dickens family and the Dickens Fellowship, as well as children from the local Charles Dickens Junior School. The street will be a hive of activity for the rest of the day, hosting plays, puppets, music and even the Pickwick Bicycle Club’s penny-farthings. Then at midday, St Mary’s Church, where Dickens was baptised will host a Thanksgiving Service. We are honoured to welcome leading actors Sheila Hancock and Simon Callow to Portsmouth to give readings from Dickens work.
The Heritage Lottery Funded Dickens Community Archive project, A Tale of One City, is at the centre of our celebrations throughout the year. January 28th saw the refurbished Dickens Birthplace Museum re-open and the launch of a brand new exhibition at the City Museum, also called A Tale of One City, which explores Portsmouth in Dickens lifetime (1812 – 1870) through the central themes of his work, including love, education, health and crime. The exhibition has at its heart some manuscript pages from Nicholas Nickleby, on loan from the British Library. Libraries will be showcasing ‘Oliver Twist’ in Portsmouth Reads Dickens, with 4000 copies of the Vintage Classic edition being given away in venues across the city. Each secondary school in the city received two complete sets of Dickens novels for their libraries and city residents have been encouraged to apply to give away copies themselves.
Our partners across the city are also celebrating Dickens 2012. National favourite Simon Callow will be performing at various events on Dickens’ birthday, including a performance at the New Theatre Royal. The Kings Theatre will be bringing us performances of Barnaby Rudge and David Copperfield, while Groundlings Theatre will transform into a living Victorian museum. Aspex gallery will be lending a uniquely creative interpretation to Dickens’ revolutionary novel A Tale of Two Cities in its installation, The Sea Rises. This year’s Portsmouth Festivities will take on a distinctly Dickensian flavour for its theme of Great Expectations while the year will close with a truly Dickensian Festival of Christmas in the Historic Dockyard.
Portsmouth University will feature Dickens through the year, hosting two conferences, a series of Literature Cafes, film screenings. Following the International Dickens Fellowship Conference in the city, the local Dickens Fellowships will unveil the UK’s first statue of Dickens in the Guildhall Square.
The Dickens 2012 celebrations not only contribute towards Portsmouth’s developing reputation as The Home of Great Writing, but also to our broader identity as a visitor destination, both at home and abroad. This year Dickens 2012 events will be taking place in over 50 countries, including across the USA, Europe and Asia, and Portsmouth’s role in the international celebrations are set to attract international as well as domestic visitors.
To capitalise on this global interest, we are advertising our year-long programme of events at both Waterloo and Heathrow Airport from 23rd January. The regions media will feature the city heavily around the week of the birthday, and Dickens will be present in the city with illustrations of his characters across the Civic Offices windows, billboard advertising from 26th February and through a partnership with First Buses five Dickens buses will travel through the city. National media coverage has grown steadily and will include a new audio guide to the Birthplace Museum created by the Guardian. Internationally we have welcomed interest from Australia, China and America.
I have attached a Calendar of Events for Portsmouth’s Dickens 2012
celebrations for your interest and information.
As many of you will know already, the city’s Literature Development Officer, Dom Kippin has developed a Literature Strategy. Last year, Dom undertook work to create a new strap line for the city as Portsmouth: the Home of Great Writing – this will represent all of Portsmouth’s literary heritage and contemporary scene supported by a range of events, including the celebrations for Dickens 2012 and programmes such as Portsmouth BookFest.
Recently, Dom has built on the 2006 Portsmouth Paper 74, Portsmouth Novelists by David Francis to create a Portsmouth Writers iPhone app, which uses GPS technology and incorporates the Portsmouth Literature Google map featured on our VisitPortsmouth website since 2010. The app works as an interactive signpost for anyone interested in literature in Portsmouth, and includes news feeds, events listings and info on both Dickens and Conan Doyle.
The app is available for download at: Portsmouth Writers iPhone app.
As part of our commitment to promote and celebrate the city’s literary scene, we have commenced an initial feasibility study to look at the development of a new Literature Centre. Once this study is complete, we will submit a capital bid to the Arts Council, which has expressed a positive interest in the project and a related funding submission.
As ever, the Cultural Services continue to prioritise working in partnership with stakeholders from the city’s private, public and voluntary sector. If you would like more information on any of the projects mentioned in this briefing, or if you have ideas about how you or your organisation could contribute to the promotion of Portsmouth as the Home of Great Writing, please get in touch.
I hope that this update has been useful, and please do not hesitate to contact me again if I can be of any further assistance.
Stephen
Stephen Baily
Head of Cultural Services
Portsmouth City Council
1st Floor Civic Offices
Portsmouth
PO1 2AD