Activities |
The 
National Trust Birmingham Lecture Series 2010
The Birmingham Lecture Series 2010
Barber Concert Hall
6·00pm: Buffet and private view of the galleries
7.30pm: Lecture begins
Tuesday 9 February
Chillington Hall: The Next 800 Years
John and Crescent Giffard
John and Crescent Giffard have lived at Chillington Hall, an 18th-century house near Brewood in Staffordshire, for the past eleven years, but the site has been the home of the Giffard family since 1178. In this lecture, John and Crescent will talk about their fascinating family history, their award-winning restoration of the house, and their plans for securing its future for the next 800 years.
Tuesday 23 February
Capability Brown: Vandal or Visionary?
Neil Cook and Michael Smith
Was the 18th-century landscape architect, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, a visionary who revolutionised the world of landscape design or a vandal who swept away the formal, geometric, French style of garden? In this debate, Neil Cook and Michael Smith from the National Trust will go head to head and passionately argue the case for and against Capability Brown and his impact on English landscape history.
Tuesday 9 March
The Michael Cadbury Memorial Lecture
Birmingham, the New Jerusalem
Professor Robert Beckford
Christian religion was a major feature of West Indian life in post-war Britain, and establishing churches was as important as finding a job or a place to live. In this lecture, author and broadcaster Robert Beckford explores the significance of naming African Caribbean churches in the Midlands, a practice that, at the time, represented social and theological resistance to marginalisation, and which, even today, continues to contest the meaning of faith and the nature of belonging.
Tuesday 23 March
Played in Birmingham
Simon Inglis and Steve Beauchampé
Birmingham is a city founded upon hard work, enterprise and civic pride, characteristics that have also helped to shape its sporting map. In this lecture, architectural historians Simon Inglis and Steve Beauchampé focus on Birmingham’s historic sporting landscapes—from stadiums to swimming baths, parks to pavilions, golf clubs to billiard halls—and reveal little-known aspects of a heritage that has touched the lives of millions of Brummies, whether inclined towards sport or not.
Lecture and buffet: £15 (£55 for the series). Lecture only: £7·50 (£27·50 for the series). Admission by ticket only, available from Reception.