This post was contributed by Jackie Watson, a third year PhD student in English at Birkbeck.

A rare opportunity to relish learning…

I’m convinced there is nothing so quirky, and at the same time so profoundly intellectual, as the Birkbeck Medieval and Renaissance Summer School (BMRSS).  It is a showcase of academic expertise – with papers, this year on The River, from leading academics.  But what makes it special is how it encourages people from a range of backgrounds, different ages and academic levels, to meet and share their excitement in medieval and early modern literature, history and art. This year’s group is ‘typical’, people doing courses at BA, MA and PhD level, in different disciplines, from lots of different places in the UK and beyond: all talking animatedly about ideas raised by the conference, but also about their academic aspirations, and possibilities for future learning and research. It’s an encouraging environment, and highly unusual in today’s short-sighted, outcome-driven HE system…

Nothing, perhaps, shows how unusual it is more than the programme.  Such is the ambition of the summer school to provide different learning experiences to a wide variety of students, that it’s incredibly difficult to organise…  Most conferences take place in one building – with, at most, the need to move from one room to another: nothing so lacking in ambition for the BMRSS! Sessions on maps at the British Library, a group going to Shakespeare’s Globe, and another touring the city to find evidence of its lost rivers…  Greenwich Maritime Museum, Renaissance Print-making and modern river poetry…  With options at every turn, no-one’s summer school is like anyone else’s!  It’s ambitious, unusual, and very quirky…

Take the search for lost rivers…

For a variety of reasons, some of us turned down the opportunity to see Macbeth.  Seen it already, perhaps, or just about to… but all of us were very excited to ramble around London finding evidence of all those rivers whose names we’d heard so often – now, usually, underground and unseen.

Beginning in Islington with the creation of the New River and a statue of the man responsible (Hugh Myddelton) we wound our way, water-like, downhill to the Thames…  For three hours…  And at every turn we were nearly so distracted and fascinated by what we found that we risked not reaching the Globe to meet the others.

Consider the fascination of a hole in the road…

In his morning paper on Spenser and Jonson’s contributions to river poetry, Adam Smyth had (just in passing, you understand) mentioned the fact that you can, if you lie in the middle of a particular London street and listen at a grate, hear the rushing waters of the Fleet beneath.  A mildly interesting, and quite an innocent remark to make, if slightly tangential to Jonson’s account of the river’s detritus…  However, to such a group as this, such an inconsequential comment is a challenge; find the road, practically lie in it, and listen to the watery voice of the past.

Lea, Fleet, Walbrook, Quaggy, Tyburn etc. were soundly commemorated by the walk.

On to Clerkenwell (only one of the wells we passed), and St John’s Priory museum – the joyous ShaLT project app (from recent research into Shakespeare’s London Theatres involving an interactive map showing early modern sites in London), allowed us to find the site of the Elizabethan Revels Office.  We had to tear ourselves away, and on to Smithfield (past the site of the inn/brothel owned by George Wilkins, co-writer of Pericles) and St Bart’s museum (Hogarth paintings), diverting slightly to George Frederick Watts’ memorial to heroic self-sacrifice at Postman’s Park (many of whom seemedto be victims of the waterways we were interested in)…

And that was only one afternoon of the three days… Such an opportunity for learning is unforgettable, and, unfortunately, rare in today’s educational climate. Long may the quirky BMRSS continue to buck the trend!