Beyond The Castle Walls

Beyond the Castle Walls

Anna was a producer for The Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead as part their Heritage Lottery Fund programme Beyond the Castle Walls.

Windsor and Maidenhead’s links with the aeronautic industry were explored, encouraging visitors and increased access to the Windsor & Royal Borough Museum.

Artists were commissioned to develop, design and deliver projects to explore these themes, working with schools, young musicians from Windsor Youth Centre, day visitors to Spencer Denney Age Concern Centre and students at East Berkshire College.

Musician Rob Harris worked with community elders, using objects from the museum collection to evoke, discover and explore their stories and memories of personal, historical and local significance. The stories and memories were shared with young people and together they created original songs, music and soundscapes exploring the themes and ideas from their stories. These were performed by the community elders and young people to friends, families and carers and were also central to the public sharing.

Visual artist Sarah Hubacher led workshops with Art and Design students at the Windsor Campus of East Berkshire College to create a public art aeroplane sculpture celebrating the work of the Camm brothers and the world-first, ground-breaking postal flight to Windsor. Sarah and the students screen printed onto gold and silver leaf and created 60 aeroplanes. These were suspended in formation and installed at Maidenhead Library to commemorate the unique place that the borough holds in aviation history.

Writer and photographer Subhadassi worked with schools to recreate the 1911 postcards sent on the world’s first postal flight to Windsor. What was written in those original 1911 postcards? Who were they being sent to? What were their stories? Students explored ways of life before the start of World War One with a follow up activity looking at the changes the War made and using creative writing and visual art/photography to create postcards that the same writer might have sent post War. A selection of objects and costumes from the museum collection stimulated ideas for words and generated content for images, creating a series of new postcards inspired by the original postcards in the collection.

The work was showcased at a festival at White Waltham Airfield with an exhibition, performance of the unique musical composition and a stunning acrobatic aeronautic display.

The process and final pieces were also shared at a community arts festival at Bachelor’s Acre Park, Windsor.