Summary of the impact

Members of Exeter University's Centre for South West Writing (SWW) have collaborated with authors, scholars, musicians, archivists, museum staff, private businesses, public councils, and tourist organisations to enhance public understanding of the cultural heritage of the South West of England and its distinctive literary traditions. Much of their research is archival and has reached audiences via publications, conferences, concerts, festivals, lectures, blogs, exhibitions, and the commissioning of public monuments. The main impacts of their research have been to:

• preserve, conserve and present literary and cultural heritage
• engage different publics in literary and cultural heritage
• develop stimuli to tourism

Underpinning research

The Centre for South West Writing (SWW) was established in 2007 to create opportunities to engage the public in the region's rich literary heritage and enhance public awareness of Exeter University's exceptional collections of archival material relating to writers from, or who lived in, the West Country. Three members of Exeter's Department of English have played an especially significant role in creating impact from their research into the archives of prominent writers associated with the South West: Tim Kendall, Angelique Richardson, and Helen Taylor.

Kendall was appointed as Professor of English in 2006 and founded SWW the following year. His research on the Gloucestershire First World War poet Ivor Gurney led to a project, funded in part by Gloucestershire Archives, to catalogue, research and create access to Gurney's papers in 2008-12 (3.5). Kendall's PhD student and now editorial collaborator, Philip Lancaster, has been working with Kendall on the Gloucestershire archive since 2008. The project has made Gurney's papers available to a public audience through the online database of Gloucestershire Archives. It has also led to the editing of Gurney's previously unperformed musical scores. Essays by Kendall based on this archival research have appeared in major journals (3.1) and his major new anthology, published to commemorate the centenary of 1914, includes two previously unpublished Gurney poems from the archive (3.2). Kendall and Lancaster are editing Gurney's complete poems (1500 poems, of which fewer than 500 have appeared to date) for a 3-volume variorum edition of Gurney's poetry and essays to be published by Oxford English Texts from 2014.

The work of Richardson (Senior Lecturer, appointed in 1998) on Thomas Hardy is internationally recognized: she sits on the editorial boards of the Thomas Hardy Journal and the Hardy Review, and was co-organizer of the Thomas Hardy Conference at Yale in 2011. Her interdisciplinary research on environment in Hardy, which combines history of science with literary history and criticism, has been published in key critical collections (3.3; 3.4) and will culminate in a forthcoming monograph, Thomas Hardy and Biology: Character, Culture and Environment. The innovative, interdisciplinary nature of her research is indicated by its support in 2012-13 by a Research Leave Award from the Wellcome Trust (3.6). The focus of her research on the importance of local environment to Hardy's work has increasingly led her to collaborate with regional organizations and community groups, in particular Dorset Country Museum, which holds significant archives detailing Hardy's associations with his local community in Dorset and that are extensively used by Richardson in her monograph.

Taylor (Professor of English Literature, 1999-2008; University Arts and Culture Development Fellow since 2008) was already known on her appointment at Exeter for her research on the composition and publishing histories of Du Maurier's writings using the archive held in the University of Exeter's Special Collections. This work informed Taylor's Daphne Du Maurier Companion (Virago, 2007) (3.4) and co-edited special issue of Women: A Cultural Review in 2009, which comprised papers from the Du Maurier Centenary Conference that Taylor organized in 2007 (3.5). Taylor has been involved since its inception in 1997 in organising the annual Arts and Literature Festival in Fowey; originally named to honour and increase public awareness of du Maurier's work, it has expanded to cover other writers, particularly from the South West.

References to the research

Evidence of the quality of the research: peer-reviewed grant awards from major external funding bodies and peer-reviewed publications in major journals.

Grants:

7. Kendall, `Ivor Gurney' (2008-2012), award to appoint a PhD student to work on the Gurney archive; funded by Great Western Research (£27.6k) and Gloucestershire Archives (£13k).

8. Richardson, Wellcome Trust Research Leave Award, £31,475 for `Thomas Hardy and Biology: Character, Culture, and Environment' (2012-13).

9. Richardson, `Hardy and Education' (2012-16), doctoral funding award; funded by Great Western Research (33k) and the National Trust (6k).

Details of the impact

Preserving, conserving, and presenting literary and cultural heritage

Kendall has collaborated with Gloucestershire County Archives to preserve and disseminate a neglected part of English literary heritage and to create an enriched public awareness of the work of a major English poet and composer. This has been achieved through performances, readings, and publications aimed at academic and non-academic audiences (5.1). Lancaster's cataloguing of the Gurney papers was supervised by Kendall and the fully annotated catalogue of Gurney's papers — letters, essays, poems, plays, musical scores — has been accessible via the Archives website since 2011. Selections from the archive were publicly exhibited at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester from 11-14 August 2010 (5.2). The Gloucestershire Archives website notes that the work of Kendall and Lancaster has made available to the public for the first time the `musical manuscripts, letters and notebooks' of `one of the greatest composers of English art song of the twentieth century and one of the most significant poets of the First World War' (5.3).

Richardson played a leading role in the successful campaign to preserve the papers of the Thomas Hardy Players, the Dorchester theatrical group with whom Hardy associated and who staged adaptations of his novels. In December 2009, a rare collection of Hardy manuscripts, including unique material related to the Hardy Players, was put up for sale by a private collector. The export of the collection was temporarily barred following a recommendation by the Parliamentary Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art and Objects of Cultural Interest. A collaborative campaign by the Museum, the University of Exeter, the Dorset History Centre, the New Hardy Players, and the Thomas Hardy Society secured the collection for Dorset. Richardson played a key role in the campaign to keep the archive in Dorset by explaining to the public the significance of keeping the archive in the South West for Hardy scholarship (5.4). She was widely interviewed about the campaign, including on BBC Breakfast News, and was involved in fundraising events such as a public performance at Dorset County Museum which featured the last remaining member of the original Hardy Players, cast by Hardy himself in a performance in 1924 (5.5). The campaign was cited by the Times Higher Education Awards 2010 when Exeter was shortlisted for the `Excellence and Innovation in the Arts' award. Subsequently Richardson became education strategy lead for the Hardy Country Steering Group, a partnership between the National Trust and Dorset County Council to increase visitors to the Trust's Hardy Property. She has since established a monthly series of public lectures on Hardy supported by Dorset County Museum and the National Trust (2012- ) and conducted workshops on Hardy with 35 pupils from four Exeter secondary schools (2010-11).

Developing stimuli to tourism; engaging different publics in literary and cultural heritage

In 2008, the Chair of Devon and Cornwall Business Council estimated that the West Country's literary heritage had brought £20m to the region from 2003-8, citing the region's connections with writers such as Daphne du Maurier and the work of the University of Exeter (5.6). One instance of this contribution of SWW to literary tourism is the annual Literary Festival at Fowey, Cornwall. This is a regional engagement activity which has acquired a national reputation. One of the aims of the Festival is to increase public engagement with the work of du Maurier, who lived in Fowey. Taylor has played an advisory and managerial role in this festival since its inception in 1997 and is currently co-programmer. English staff have consequently played a key role in bringing academic strength to the programme: the 2011 Festival, for example, sold 12,000 tickets, of which events given or chaired by English staff accounted for 798 (5.7). The Department's involvement has been growing: in 2013 over a quarter of the events over the ten days of the Festival involved colleagues. Taylor has given many talks at the Festival, including in 2007 a sell-out interview on stage with du Maurier's three children which addressed the importance of the Exeter archive and drew on earlier family interviews included in Taylor's Daphne du Maurier Companion.

Kendall and Lancaster's project has raised Gurney's profile across the city of Gloucester. They have lobbied successfully to have Gurney's blue plaque moved to a more visible location; acted as advisors to a new sculpture situated at Gloucester Docks; and enabled the world premiere of Gurney's A Gloucestershire Rhapsody at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester in 2010 (5.8). A Gloucestershire Rhapsody was then broadcast for the first time on BBC Radio 3 on 6 December 2012, and Gurney will be `Composer of the Week' on BBC Radio 3 in June 2014. Gurney's previously unpublished poem `The Bugle' was edited by Kendall and Lancaster for The Guardian (13 Nov. 2010) to mark Remembrance Week (5.9). As a direct result of his work on Gurney, Kendall was commissioned to write and present a 1-hour documentary on `Ivor Gurney: the Poet Who Loved the War', which will be screened on BBC4 in 2014 as part of the BBC's commemoration of the centenary of the First World War (5.10).

Sources to corroborate the impact

1. Corroboration can be obtained from the Collections Team Leader at Gloucestershire Archives.

2. Ivor Gurney Archive Made Available to the Public', BBC Gloucestershire website, 11 August 2010: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/gloucestershire/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_8904000/8904811.stm (accessed 8/11/2013)

3. Gloucestershire Archives, introduction to on-line catalogue of the Ivor Gurney Collection: http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/article/109720/Ivor-Gurney (accessed 8/11/2013)

4. Corroboration can be obtained from the Director of Dorset County Museum.

5. `"Last" Thomas Hardy Player Back on Stage in Dorchester', BBC News website, 12 March 2010 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/8565496.stm (accessed 8/11/2013)

6. Western Morning News, 30 September 2008; see http://www.exeter.ac.uk/about/vision/arts/future/ (accessed 8/11/2013)

7. Email communication to Taylor from Cornish Riviera Box Office, St Austell, 2 May 2011.

8. Corroboration can be obtained from the Lead Trustee of the Ivor Gurney Estate.

9. `The Saturday Poem for Remembrance Day', The Guardian 13/11/2010 http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/nov/13/saturday-poem-bugle-ivor-gurney (accessed 8/11/2013)

10. Corroboration can be obtained from the Executive Producer, BBC Arts, who commissioned `Ivor Gurney: the Poet Who Loved the War'.