Meeting the History Detectives
This commission is a Connecting Communities and Arts in Parliament project. In 2009 a group of people from Norwich came together under the name of the History Detectives to explore the Land Tax Act of 1821 and specifically five of the commissioners from Norwich responsible for the administration of the tax. This project brings some of those original researchers back together with some new members to re-visit documents, refresh memories and reconsider the documents in both the Norfolk Record Office and Parliamentary Archives.
So yesterday we met one another in the first group session of the project. I gave a brief introduction to my work focusing on the projects where I have used historical research as a starting point. This will be the first time I have worked with images of material from this date.
The group are very enthusiastic and thoroughly enjoyed looking at the documents we ordered up in advance from the strong room. To start the visual process I asked the group to work on a timeline, mapping the historical material. We will add to this map each week and it will form the basis for me to develop the final digital artwork.
I’m looking forward to next week when we look at further documents and start to plan site visits around Norwich.
