This is the first in what will be a series of Study Days looking at the roles and importance of the family in Jane Austen’s novels. This day will focus upon sisters. There will be a consideration of not only the five Bennet sisters but also the contribution made by others, such as the sisters of Bingley and Darcy.

What is reality? Is what we experience in our lives real or mere shadows? 

By means of allegory, illusion and a sprinkling of quantum physics we come to realise that Plato’s Cave is an adequate metaphor, helping us realise the incomprehensibility of The Real.

The reputation of these plays has been hampered over time by their unexciting titles and the unfair perception that as plays written by Shakespeare early in his career they are less worthy of consideration. i aim to dispel this prejudice! I shall deal with each play in its own right but also i will consider the three plays as a trilogy.

From his birth in 1863 Austen Chamberlain was groomed for the highest public office by his father Joseph Chamberlain, one of the great figures of Victorian and Edwardian England.

Although these two plays are very different dramatists, the plays have a striking similarity. In the construction both Priestley and Pinter have chosen to disrupt the chronology of the action which has a powerful impact on how the audience receives and responds to characters’ actions and behaviour.

Apprenticeship in Britain - that is, vocational education based on the learner as a junior employee - once served as the transition between compulsory schooling and adulthood. It provided new entrants to the workforce not just with specific techniques, but with broader occupational competence.

We will be joined by Matthew Vaughan of Donald Insall Associates, one of the world’s leading specialist architectural firms focused on the care, repair, adaptation and conservation of historic buildings. Established over 60 years ago the practice has pioneered a creative approach to conservation, centred on the belief that change is continuous and buildings are, in effect, ‘alive’.

This play is frequently celebrated as a stirringly patriotic call to arms. It is quoted at moments of national crisis and on the rugby field. However, Shakespeare’s play is more complex.

Do you want to write, but find it hard to get started or build momentum? Maybe your writing has fallen flat and your ideas feel tired, or you've got so many demands on your time and energy that writing feels like a luxury you can't afford. Wherever you're at, this course can help. Each week we'll explore a different way into writing through practical, playful experiments. You'll learn how to dismantle blocks to creativity, how to keep feeding your imagination, how to bring new life into your writing, and how to keep your writing going.

In this course, you’ll explore techniques that help you create compelling characters, believable settings and convincing dialogue. We’ll look at different ways of plotting, balancing detail and description, and playing with viewpoint to create different effects. We’ll consider how other writers create convincing narratives and apply what we learn to our own writing. Our classes are friendly and supportive, and we welcome new and more established writers.

BMI Scientist in Residence Dr James Dawson looks at the representation of comets in art, backed up with a sprinkling of science.

Everyone has a story worth telling. Whether you want to share yours with friends, family or a wider audience, this course helps you to capture the essence of important moments in your life. You’ll develop key writing skills, such as how to structure your stories and create vivid details. No previous writing experience necessary.

What is generally judged to be Alexandre Dumas’s greatest novel has generated a wide range of screen versions. Do the vicissitudes suffered by Edmond Dantes justify the theatricality of his actions? However much we may sympathise with his desire for revenge, there are challenging moral questions to be confronted.

In her day, Anna Mary Howitt was an artist, author and activist who was fully immersed in her cultural and social milieu. Identified by Marsh and Nunn as ‘the nearest thing to a female Pre-Raphaelite, tout court', Howitt established herself as among the great artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

In structuring his novel around one woman with three men wooing her, Hardy chooses symbolic names; his heroine Bathsheba is encircled by Gabriel Oak, Sergeant Troy and William Boldwood.

Join us as Margaret shows us how to create fabric strawberries to gift, use as packages for presents or to as Christmas tree decorations.

Despite their titles these two plays are individually complete. Both are tightly constructed and richly layered.

What was Chartism, how did it manifest in the Midlands, and why is it still worth talking about now?

Robert’s talk will encompass the casual ball play of ancient times through to the emergence of organised games such as royal tennis and its equivalents around Europe. He will tell of the popularity of rackets, a Victorian game for everyman and the arrival, in 1874, of lawn tennis in the form of Walter Wingfield’s Sphairistike and Gem and Perera’s Pelota.

We will be visiting Wolverhampton Art Gallery to see the Evelyn De Morgan exhibition, a rare opportunity to see the work of the female Pre-Raphaelite artist. Meet at the café at the Art Gallery at 11am.

Anne Amison was a volunteer guide in St Mark’s Basilica for a number of years. Her talk will share some of the insights gained from learning about this magnificent building, and explore the eastern influences on its architecture, the glorious mosaics, its impact on choral music

These plays, performed just one year apart, juxtapose different worlds.

BMI Artist-in-Residence Peter Tinkler is going to give a demonstration on the basic principles of colour theory, via the split-primary system of colour mixing. 

He is going to expand the range of primary colours from 3 to 6 and show how this is a much better way of learning the core principles of mixing colours.  Whilst also talk about the origins of some of our favourite pigments, and as you'll see, they have a rather 'colourful' past.

To accompany the Picture Show exhibition, Birmingham author, playwright and lifelong Erdington resident Patrick Hayes will lead an interactive talk considering the near history of Erdington from 1950-1980.

Join Sharon for another inspiring creative writing workshop. Please bring paper and pens.

This talk will concentrate on Joseph Chamberlain’s unique achievement in Birmingham. By turns he was a hugely successful businessman, a reforming educator – of children, working men and students – a charismatic, dynamic municipal leader, and the founder of a formidable and irresistible political base in Birmingham, while making it ‘the best governed city in the world.

Considered by many to be Wilkie Collins’ best novel, The Woman in White, was first published in serial form (1859-60)

Do you want to write, but find it hard to get started or build momentum? Maybe your writing has fallen flat and your ideas feel tired, or you've got so many demands on your time and energy that writing feels like a luxury you can't afford. Wherever you're at, this course can help