New starts in November 2019 at jjheritage.com

Several projects were completed in 2019. Or should we say milestones of ongoing projects were met?

It was a warm and clear day on Sunday 6 October for the Warwickshire Triathlon events at Stratford Upon Avon with many tourists encouraging the participants in the pool, on the cycle and on the run. After the recent rains, the run route which goes along the towpath for a short distance, was a concern but not too bad underfoot. A fun but challenging event, this was Jean’s second Sprint Triathlon of 2019 (400m swim, 18 kilometre cycle and 5K run), distance as well as a duathlon event with her niece Kelly. In 2019 British Triathlon has a social media campaign, #TriLikeMe designed to show that triathlon is for everyone, and this was certainly in evidence with a range of different abilities. Kelly’s husband Stu, who has done a wide range of sporting challenges in 2019 joined us and enjoyed the event. More to come next year, provided that winter training goes well.

The newly launched £19.2 million The Silverstone Experience (TSE) opened its doors in 2019 at the entrance to the circuit, with commanding views from the café area over the infield, as well as parts of the circuit. With half the funds provided by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the dedicated heritage themed exhibitions and archive collections are housed in a refurbished World War Two aircraft hangar. TSE aims to ensure that the heritage of Silverstone and post-war British motor racing is interpreted for today’s public as well as protected for future generations. The new visitor attraction’s strategy is to use contemporary history and sports heritage, particularly to inspire young people, by celebrating the circuit and the country’s position at the heart of the global motor sport industry.

Jean has recently written an article about TSE visitor attraction, to come out in a book edited by Dr Kevin Moore, Dr Christian Wacker and Professor John Hughson in 2020, outlining the key contributions to academic debates around sporting museums, and motor sport. This is a relatively under-researched aspect of sport history and heritage. Motor sport has been neglected in the academic literature on sporting museums, which has also tended to neglect young people under the age of eighteen as a distinct population, or to assume their presence as part of a wider visitor audience. This is changing in large part due to more complex use of audio-visual technology as part of museum design, and now there is an emergent research agenda around whether history and heritage can be used to inspire young people in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine (STEMM) subjects. We will return to this subject in 2020. As TSE moves into the next phase of delivery, these will be key questions. 

As well as these milestones, several new projects will be launched by jjheritage over the course of 2019 and into 2020. One of these, Legendary Lionesses, concerns research that has been done by us over the summer of 2019 into the history of the England women’s Senior Team from 1972 to the present. Again this is intended for a book length treatment and watch out for several updates here. Particularly if you have new information and collections from women players that we might use to research and better tell the story. Our aim is the tell the story through the decades from the official England team, starting in the 1970s and working backwards, and forwards, to cover all aspects. Jean has interviewed several of the England captains across the decades and will continue this work over the Winter. This is intended as a free resource ahead of England hosting the women’s Euro 2021, and will also form part of a HLF bid. Jean has been contacted by several host clubs and regions of Euro 2021 for heritage projects and if you’d like her to consult on your project please do get in touch.

Jean has run, swam and cycled some of the iconic British races, from the London marathon to the Great North Run, to swimming the Great North Swim, and the Serpentine as well as completing her first triathlons this year. Starting in November and moving into next year jjheritage will launch the Run, Swim and Cycle historian where we will extend this by covering iconic geographies in the UK and abroad. Watch out for updates on this, along with a funded project by the Leisure Studies Association called the ethnography of swimming with academic Dr Barbara Bell, and artist Deborah Lovegrove. You can follow us on Twitter @JeanMWilliams for updates.

As 2020 is an Olympic and Paralympic year, with historic Tokyo as host venue, we will also be hosting a curated and dedicated space to the history of the Olympic Games as you may not know them. Watch out for more updates as we turn from 2019 to 2020. As part of this work we will also be scoping a study of the archives collections of British Judo.

Watch this space!