Yes, except accept that and thanks the invitation to come and talk about fascinating papers on Friday.
Lots of following through continuing today. Just a quick aside on on on America's one.
That's very interesting. The museum is something which I think is an interesting heritage relic.
It was quite popular in the 19th century and I was fascinated by the idea of pop stars.
Also museums. That's just an aside. What I'm actually talking about today is about the M.A folklore studies set up two years ago at my university.
So I'll talk a bit about the M.A folklore. I'll talk about the content, in particular the model I teach, which is about folklore,
landscape, and hence my presence at this interesting colloquium.
I'll look at some of the broader themes that we run through, all the sessions that we do around folklore landscape,
and then sort of conclude with some pointers where I think it intersects with the
themes that are central to to this this event and the one on Friday as well.
So we set up the same folklore studies two years ago.
It's the only M.A, in fact, it's the only real programme of of higher education studies and folklore in England.
There was an I in folklore a number of years ago at Sheffield run out by what was called sector.
It was Centre for English Culture, Tradition and Language at Sheffield,
but which which was closed down by Sheffield University some 10, 15, fifteen years ago now.
So we are the only one English. There is another M.A. in folklore studies in Scotland run out of the Elphinstone Institute from Aberdeen University,
which doesn't stay in Scottish higher education, typical Hamlet and ethnology and folklore which focuses on Scotland.
When we do focuses on Britain, although it allows students to engage with landscapes across.
Across the globe as well, if it meets all the aims and outcomes of the usual things, a postgraduate education programme on this, I mean,
the fact that we are the only M-I focussed studies tells you something quite interesting
about the development of higher education in this country in the first place. When you compare it to the fact that there are a folklore studies.
A lot of them in North America and also in northern Europe as well. This is a very interesting stretch.
We won't go into that. See lists, challenges when you try to set up something like this,
because the absence is often interpreted by marketing departments as the fact there is no interest.
Which is exactly what happened to me in trying to develop this programme. There was nothing to compare it to.
And so they say, well, you know, there's no interest. Well, in fact, obviously.
BMA has shown a huge interest as we all. All of this here.
There's a huge interest, general interest in football, even when people that miss, you know, folklore is we can tell them.
But what you're interested in is photo.
So we're kind of tapping in and this this m.a to a very rich seam of people who are coming back into education after 20,
30, 40 years or more to have postgraduate Amazigh as well.
But want to come back because they want to in a sense,
understandably validate their interest in an academic way and fo'c'sle the things that they've been interested and passionate about in their lives.
So our folks now, particularly then on my watch.
We have we have several modules, honestly, we have the usual serial methodology modules,
the practical ones when we go through the ethics process of interviewing, participant observation, also general field skills of a folklorist.
Then we have modules about migration of beliefs and traditions, both in terms of the migration of British populations overseas,
but also then new migrant populations to Britain and how that enriches British folklore.
And that ties tie in a bit with some of the issues raised today about nation, nation, identity and folklore.
Who owns who owns what is British folklore? Today, it's multicultural.
What about the legends associations with the landscape? Well, they reflect less upon that.
But actually, these are living traditions developed. So there's lots of interesting issues that arise in nation identity and folklore and landscape.
And then we also have one which is on contemporary tradition and contemporary legends as well.
And then mine, which is on folklore and landscape. So what is my module about?
Well, it has to sort of General ANX. One of those is to explore the human interaction with the landscape through
custom and ritual of the time and how those are represented in the present.
And the second overarching aim is how has the landscape been defined through a
reimagining of the past and negotiations over its supernatural and mundane ownership?
So there's kind of the overarching aims and outcomes from those studying this module, how that breaks down reality,
the sorts of things we pick up on which are which touch upon the things that were being discussed here and also also what Mary was talking about.
So in my workshops, I'll just tick through briefly. So we have one which is looking at place names and folklore.
And in that, for example, we look at Druid names in the landscape and how they came into popular usage and
their interactions and the influence there of the early modern antiquarians,
such as stupidly, who are providing these Druidic interpretations of prehistoric monuments where they didn't exist before.
How did that language of Druids and Druidry end up in popular folklore and popular place names, which is an interesting, an ultimately unknowable.
But we try and look at what are the modes of transmission and transmission of those sorts of names.
Also again, for Mary about Barot names as well, the folkloric names associated with prehistoric barrows.
What did they actually tell us about popular Norway? Do these names come from.
What they mean, how they changed over time. We then look at things like the sacred in the post reformation landscape.
So we look at the pre pre reformation interpretation of the landscape, they say, and particularly the megalithic structures within it.
And then we're looking at a reformation landscape, which Alexander Walsham this has written a very interesting detailed book about.
And there's lots more to explore about the post Reformation.
Romans also talked about this as well as Reformation, Longworth and folklore and how it relates to continuing tradition, custom in the landscape.
So we look at that, but also focus on things like Hangmen Stones,
which the famous Crawford in archaeological circles was fascinated by from his work on the King Ordnance Survey maps.
Are about 20 of these Hangu land stones, and each of them has a very similar legend,
which is the legend of a thief, not me, a sheep thief, sometimes a deer who basically rests his back.
He's got the the stolen animal on a rope around his neck, on his shoulders, and he leans back on the stone to rest who is ill gotten gains.
And the next day he's found dead because he's strangled by the rope as the sheep rests on the other side of the stone.
Twenty of these is a classic example of migratory leisure. Where do they come from? The first dates around the 18th century onwards.
So how again did this legend spread? Fascinating to try and understand and explore in the landscape.
We then look at legendary personalities and historic figures in the landscape, from kings to criminals.
Obviously, we make a sort of little Kaminey case study there about Robin Hood and not Sherwood
Forest and the ways in which that legend and those legends have been told,
retold both an oral form and a literary form and how it's represented today and how people engage with it.
The Robin Hood Festival then helped me lots of re-enacts, lots of people having good fun associated with Tree.
So we'll try to explore these things in the long, derange time.
We also look at encounters with supernatural beings and the landscape of silly hauntings,
but also the role of the devil in those sorts of popken traditional legendry associations with landscape features, both natural and human.
And I'll talk a bit briefly about that. There was Dich is one of my student projects, for example.
Sussex is a sources and assets, as I am very popular resort, sort of a day out trip for people on the south coast.
And looking at them, can how people today understand and explore like and feel about those legendary associations that place names.
And we also look at change. I look at the enclosure movement and how enclosure and massive transformational change in the countryside,
particularly enclosure landscapes, pioneering closure from 18th century onwards.
Sleep John Clares a source their own interpretation of what happens to legends and traditions and people's interactions with the landscape.
In rapid change, when the common fields completely taken away, you have new roads put in obsolete,
hedged surveyor's landscape, moves in old pathways, old associations, but lost with the landscape.
What are what is the long term?
And both the short term consequences that fall folklore and people's interaction with landscape and mechanisation electricity as well.
In terms of how does that inform shaped ways in which we look and interact,
both in an urban environment rapidly elsley urban environment from the 1893 19th century onwards, but also.
Ways in which it changes perceptions, change perceptions of night and day in the way we see the landscape.
Night and day, most of them associate landscape only with the daylight hours.
But I'll see the landscape does get transformed and shaped and shifted and the travel agents, which are only associated with the Night-Time as well.
And finally, when we're looking at folklore in the open environment, some questions such as,
you know, is there such a thing as urban folklore or is it just folklore in the urban landscape?
So we have a good old chew over those sorts of issues. And finally, we look at forecastle landscape in fiction,
focussing of seeing people like Alan Garner's work as well, but also things like Hoogland by David Southpaws,
fantastic recreation of a mythical county from the 1970s,
which I think is a wonderful way in which people today are kind of reimagining an imagined landscape,
but also one which has a kind of proximity to reality. Underpinning all those things that we're looking at, awesome deep ones.
Obviously, as I already mentioned, we're looking at identity as a concept, both local and national,
the ways in which people interact or do not interact with their landscape or associated with legends or other forms of folklore.
We look at tourism and folklore tourism for landscape places and spaces.
We, for example, do a session on mother ships and Skaife, which is obviously a popular tourist attraction.
We look at how mother ships since Cave is marked it both in terms of its landscape,
but also how the legend of Mother Shipton is marketed in relationship to that landscape.
And we use TripAdvisor as a source. Fascinating for something like that.
Do you go through the comments? What is it that people are going to mother ship items for?
What is the experience as they come out on TripAdvisor without going through
the cost and expense and ethics forms of doing a survey and exit interviews?
TripAdvisor is an interesting way of exploring what it is that people are getting out of these places and spaces and how.
How do they come out with what is actually the legends that draws them there?
Is it just because they want to go see the cave? What is it?
How unhealth? What is the extent of them? Of the usual ones of the car park is full and food is too expensive because the usual things.
But that's quite interesting. Thirdly, we also look at the absence of heritage interpretation for of sites which have literary associations.
This comes back to something that both Tallis and Edward Snowden were talking about as well.
There are so many places out there which have still have local elections, still have folkloric associations reported to local people.
And some of those also are important to other groups as Rosie talks about what's neo pagan groups, for example.
Yet they have no interpretation at all. We look at the ways in which that lack of interpretation does.
It leads to a dwindling decline and ending of those folk rock.
Or does it actually reinvigorated those people? Invest more in it. There is no interpretation.
They're not being guided by that interpretation boards and things like that.
They can sense reinventing or reimagine their experience. That experiential side of their visits to their.
And then just want to move on now to looking at some of the ways in which students do they get out of this.
This module, what does it add about their own understanding the landscape and focus it?
If we come through best in what we assignment's, this is a case study.
Have to pick up a particular place or space and look at its folklore approximations,
but then also look at how people interact with it, provide historical context.
And it's quite interesting what the students have chosen over the last two years.
Some of them, some of them are well known places.
I mentioned Devil's Docs. I had a brilliant podcast. We do podcasts, blogs and essays.
They have a choice in this case study. I had a brilliant podcast exploring Devil's Dich.
We had another one which is well known. We had another one about found this island also quite well known for those of mystery defence site.
We also had one, but Windsor Great Park Kelly in Brighton Mountain, Glastonbury, and soon I was giants.
So we have all those sorts of ones, which you might call have a national profile.
But then quite a few of the student shows ones which were local to them, which perhaps very few people know about, maybe just as dog walking sites.
But actually, once they started digging, found they had a rich folklore.
There was a re-engagement re understanding of local places of landscape significance.
And some one, for example, was some bean holes or swallow holes in Essex,
which had some really interesting history heritage, but largely abandoned militarily, knows much about them.
But there they are. They have been important to people in the past and are open to interpretation today.
Number of wells, as you imagine, wholly wells, abandoned wholly and healing wells cropped up some more high profile than others.
We had a really interesting series of blogs about some andwell in Brighton, which.
It was a major tourist visitor attraction in Brighton and Hoath in the 19th century.
Real bustling sort of place. But today can largely abandoned. Recent developments render it really quite dull and nondescript.
And yet it has such a vibrant history, such a vibrant history and such vibrant associations.
If you dig back into the past and we've got someone took about Six Hills in Stevenage, which are a series of unusual Roman Roman burial mounds,
unusual sleep in the English landscape and the right in the middle of a housing estate, Newtown, Stevenage.
And again, very rich. And how people engage for that today. You've got these extraordinary ancient monuments,
hills right smack in 1970s housing estates with no interpretation whatsoever and yet knew what happens is that new folklore grows up.
There's an old folklore to it and a new folklore grows up by people who don't know what they are.
But any such features that attract new associations, whether it's hauntings or phantom talk, is along the road next play or whatever.
These all actors, local folk for new folklore as well as its prognosis.
So just to just to wrap up some general, broad themes,
which I think come out of all this from the experience of running these two years
experience of the students experiencing this and sort of things we on to think about,
because some of them want to go into heritage shops. Some of the ones go into museums and libraries and tourism as well.
So we've got to get Mosfilm thinking about these ways in which we situate this in our contemporary world.
So one is about issues, about know practical ones,
about maximising and promoting local what little known spaces and places through folkloric associations.
As a practical agenda point more conceptually, but related would be, you know,
is and should folklore itself be considered as landscape heritage open about the actual landscape future itself is.
This is a moment of a piece of folklore. A an example of landscape heritage without having the physicality of it time specific to irritation of it.
Thirdly, the value of storytelling is really important.
And we do use the diligence map and we do use the telling tales in the module.
So we have been engaging with English heritage work on this and students, really, Joy.
And we we use Stand and Drew and the little mini video you did for Stanton Drew and the stone circle there, petrified dancers.
And so we look through that and explore why why English heritage is invested in very positive ways isn't critical.
Why is it in heritage, in investing both money, time and energy,
in engaging people with folklore of their sites when they already have their other history and prehistory, more dominant ones?
So that storytelling is really important, I think, in terms of ownership and re-engagement.
And when we talk about photos, multicultural and all those issues about who actually goes out into the rural landscape,
all the rise and who owns it and folklore, I think store time is one way of re-engaging or engaging for the first time with people.
And finally, the idea of a visitor attraction, which which leaser in particular is picking up about the ways in which, in fact, fiction, legend, etc.,
if you get the balance right,
can act as a re re energising and re-engagement look of local communities and other communities with local sites, with heritage interest.
So that's me.