August 21, 2015
Made through a series of open workshops at the Beaney. Rob Turner is currently the Resident Armchair Artist at The Beaney in Canterbury. The second workshop coincided with another event at the Beaney that day and it was busy. I don’t remember a point during the day where it wasn’t being worked on. It was so […]
April 26, 2016
Sonia Overall is currently the Resident Armchair Artist at The Beaney in Canterbury. The magic lantern exhibition Stories in the Dark is open, and it’s my first chance to spend some time there. Lights dance on surfaces. Apparatus cranks and whines. There are shutter clicks and repetitions, sounds emerging like chants in the half-darkness. I speak […]
April 04, 2016
People living with dementia are being invited to get involved in free creative writing sessions taking place at the Beaney in Canterbury from mid-April. The Cabinet of Curiosities project, run by the city council’s Community Services team, is open to anyone living with dementia and aims to help them write creatively using the museum’s collections […]
December 08, 2021
Gutter Apples was painted by British artist Ian Hunter (27th April 1939 – 1st March 2017), in oil paints on board and hangs in the People and Places gallery at The Beaney. It’s a piece that often captures the attention of visitors, exuding an air of mystery that leaves its admirers with more questions than […]
Canterbury Library was the first publicly funded library in Great Britain, through innovative interpretation of the Museums Act 1845 for provision of a museum of arts and science. It is now part of a large network of public libraries managed by Kent County Council
Fittingly, Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate frequently engineered their own solutions to the production challenges faced, such as: adopting a cardboard cut-out animation process for their early productions, which relied on sticky tack for tension and placement; or the Pingwings, whose crocheted bodies provided flexibility and durability; or the hybrid environments of the Pogles, which […]
In the introduction, we hear of “how a Prince built a long ship and sailed in it beyond the black ice at the edge of the world to bring home his bride from the land of the midnight sun”. Here, Postgate and Firmin seek to evoke a range of influences. The undertaking of such a […]
There is a simple yet sad tale of how The Beaney came to acquire a rook dressed quite curiously in a red coat.
The intriguing story is from the early 1900s when a group of boys, looking for a bit of fun, captured a rook and dressed it quite playfully in a red coat. Unfortunately, when the rook eventually returned to its flock, still clad in its fetching red coat, it was rejected by its flock…
