Corinne Fowler - Our Island Stories
British Summer Time
at All Saints Church, Kings Heath
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We are delighted to be hosting Corinne Fowler at All Saint's Church, Kings Heath as part of the Kings Heath Arts Fest, happening at the newly refurbished All Saints Centre on Saturday May 3rd.
Corinne will be in conversation about her book, Our Island Stories - Ten Walks through Rural Britain and it’s Hidden History of Empire, with Bharti Parmar (artist) and Raj Pal (curator), two of the companions on her walks (the cotton walk and the Indian walk through the Cotswolds).
Saturday May 3rd at 3pm
Corinne Fowler is Professor of Colonialism and Heritage in Museum Studies at the University of Leicester. In 2020 Corinne co-authored an audit of peer-reviewed research about National Trust properties’ connections to empire, which galvanized the heritage sector to address its colonial stories and became a major media story. The report won the Museums and Heritage Special Recognition Award, 2022 and an Eastern Eye Award 2023.
Before this, Corinne directed Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted, a child-led history and writing project (2018-2022), resulting in a book of commissioned writing called Colonial Countryside (Peepal Tree Press, July 2024) which was funded by Arts Council England. Corinne’s new book Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain was published on 2 May 2024 by Penguin Allen Lane.
Corinne is co-investigator on a research project called the ‘Rural Racism project: towards a more inclusive countryside.
Our Island StoriesEmpire transformed rural lives: whether in Welsh sheep farms or Cornish copper mines, it offered both opportunity and exploitation. Fowler shows how the booming profits of overseas colonial activities directly contributed to enclosure, land clearances and dispossession. These histories, usually considered separately, continue to link the lives of their descendants now.
To give an honest account, to offer both affection and criticism, is a matter of respect: we should not knowingly tell half a history. This new knowledge of our island stories, once gained, can only deepen Britons' relationship with their beloved landscape.
