The Guild at the Gender & Creativity conference in Oxford
On 8-10th September, the Guild of Medievalist Makers was at the Gender & Medieval Studies conference at University College, Oxford, exploring the theme of Gender & Creativity! The conference was organised by Guild co-founder Laura and the three days were structured to make space for both creative & critical practice. The artwork for the conference (below) was created by our co-founder Kristen: meet the Wives of Bath!
Kristen gave a fascinating and inspiring keynote entitled ‘“A hepe of brokyn ymages”: Chaucer, Creativity, and the Long Cow of Rumination’ in which she explored her comics practice and showed why cultivating our own creative practices of making, in whatever medium, and most especially in community, helps to keep our research fresh, active, and well fertilised! Keynotes were also delivered by GuMMie Teresa Pilgrim (creative practitioner, transfeminist scholar, and activist) exploring the life of St Mary of Egypt and her zine work (which you can read more about in her MMM post here). We were also treated to an ‘in conversation’ event with film-makers Mirabelle Dominé-Walley & Luke Walker, discussing their Margery Kempe film Into the Mystic and even sharing some incredible extracts from the film with us.
A key part of the conference was the Exhibition of participants creative work and the ‘open mic’ style Creative Showcase. Guild member & Oxford graduate student Brooklyn Arnot curated an incredible display of visual art which included her own paintings, prints and scraperboard art by GuMMie Marie Besson, zines by Teresa Pilgrim, photography by David Carillo-Rangel, textile art by Molly Cartwright and Kierri Price, illustrations by Meg Hyland and Cris A, a linocut print by our co-founder Eleanor, and Laura’s Mum’s embroidery inspired by the medieval poem Pearl.
Laura hosted the Creative Showcase which included storytelling performances from GuMMies Daisy Black & Jane Bonsall, poetry from Brooklyn, Laura, Miriam Waters, Ella O’Shea (co-organiser of student-led medievalism group Mearcstapan), video artwork by Holly Slingsby, a creative-critical essay on embodied experience in the archives by Francesca Books, a performance of Old Norse poetry by Clare Mulley, and a beautiful performance of Hildegard of Bingen’s music by singer Clemmie Franks. It was wonderful to hear such incredible work!
Creativity as a practice was very much baked into the conference. Attendees were encouraged to decorate their nametags and there was a wonderful Quiet Room / Craft Space, with craft materials provided by Teresa Pilgrim, so that delegates could decorate the zine pages that Laura provided in the conference packs.
The conference also raised an incredible £327 for the charity Blossom LGBT, which supports LGBTQIA+ young people, through ticket sales for a creative raffle of donated items handmade by delegates which included blankets, prints, zines, comics, poetry, music, collage, paintings, stickers and more! Below are just a few of the beautiful items donated.
Kristen & Laura also ran their Modular Haiku Comics workshop for the delegates, in which Laura teaches participants how to write a haiku inspired by their work and Kristen then guides them in creating visual materials to make a four panel comic. The instructions for this workshop will be available on our blog later this month!
The Guild were delighted to sponsor the medieval makings at the conference and it was a pleasure to see so many GuMMies taking part, from giving papers and performing in the Showcase to donating creative contributions for the exhibition & raffle.
The next Gender & Medieval Studies conference will take place in Swansea in 2027. More information will be available on the GMS website in due course and we will share the Call for Papers on our CFP page once it is open.
Beautiful pop up zine page made by GuMMie Molly Cartwright.
