Katy Whitaker (Historic England/PhD student UoR  Archaeology) +  Annette Haworth (member of Friends) for £120 to print 1500 sheets of A3 based on Katy’s conference poster which fold into comic-books for the National Trust Heritage Open Days September 2021 tours/info about the Marquis of Blandford’s Grotto + the Victorian Fernery in the Wilderness.

Katy provided a poster (which you can see here) that she had  exhibited at a conference for the Friends’ Park House-based Open Day. She will redesign this into comic-book folded A3 form with a map on the back to inform visitors who come the NT’s Heritage Open Days (2 weekends in September). We will man the site in conjunction with RG Spaces and hope also to extend the area with tours of the ‘historic’, if weird, temporary office buildings currently occupied by Art, plus info on the Citadel so that area of Earley Gate becomes an interesting, if quirky, HOD destination.

We envisage the printing being done by a firm such as InstantPrint probably under the auspices of the Friends (in the same way Ian got the banners for the Astor exhibition done) as that speeds things up and enables us to create our own designs and layout.

We had been planning this ‘event’ for the 2020 Heritage Open Days but had to cancel due to the University being at the stage of just receiving students back after the Summer Term’s lockdown. This could happen again. Due to Covid uncertainty, we would not commit to the printing until the last possible moment so as not to waste the grant.