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

Britain’s landscape contains many stone circles, yet their original purpose remains mysterious despite extensive archaeological investigation, and perhaps it is their obscurity which makes them so fascinating.

Do we control our technologies or do our technologies control us? Is the invention of progress also the invention of disaster? In this talk Dr Brian Sudlow (Aston University) will consider how French intellectuals in the interwar period quarrelled about the merits of technology and its effects on western civilisation

Small Performances: investigating the typographic punches of John Baskerville (1707-75) through heritage science and practice-based research.

'Transatlantic Thoughts: Winston Churchill, Anglo-America and the 'Special Relationship' Revisited'

An Address by the 168th President of The Birmingham & Midland Institute, Professor Sir David Cannadine

This talk will re-evaluate an unjustly forgotten Birmingham titan. Neville Chamberlain was Britain’s most creative social reformer between 1910 and 1940, the country’s leading authority on Housing, the Poor Law, Health and Local Government.

Join us for a poetry reading with Institute Poet-in-Residence Naush Sabah. Naush will be sharing, for the first time, poems from a new sequence exploring the built environment, urban landscapes, and bodies of water, with particular attention to Sparkbrook, Birmingham and Mirpur, Azad Kashmir, and the Pahari-speaking diaspora communities of both cities. Naush will also read from other new and unpublished work from her forthcoming full-length collection

To celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Sir Arthur Sullivan, Elaine Richardson, Chairman of the Sir Arthur Sullivan Society, will be giving a talk on Sir Arthur, including some facts you might not know.

Jacob Plumtree at the piano.

The West Midlands before the clock – the making of the Midlands from the Big Bang to the Industrial Revolution.

Join Chamber CEO Henrietta Brealey as she discusses Birmingham past and present. including their work with some of Birmingham’s most influential businesses. As well as talking about the Chamber archives, which as team from BMI recently categorised and incorporated in our Library here at the Institute.