Glossop Guild for enquiring minds
Zooming Through the Spring
On-line Courses
January 2022 ~ March 2022
Your Zoom Season Pass
In order to make "Zooming Through the Autumn" on-line term as flexible as possible, we are again offering a single payment "season pass" which will entitle you to join any or all of the spring sessions below. The Spring Zoom Season Pass costs just £25 for members or £35 for non-members*.
* To pay for the lectures as a non-member select the arrow in the white box opposite to this text, then on the drop-down menu select the non-member price of £35, next select "Buy Lectures" and follow the prompts.
Note:- The non-member price of £35 means you get the Spring Zoom Season Pass and Guild Membership, entitling you to member discounted prices for all our other autumn and future spring term courses until the end of April 2022.
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After receipt of payment you will receive a joining invite to each individual session which contains a session ID, password and internet link.
Note: These invites are usually sent out on the preceding day of each course.
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Frida Kahlo: An Artist by Accident
Tutor: Frank Vigon
Monday 17th January 2022
10.00am - 12.00pm
We’re starting the new year with a talk by Frank Vigon on Frida Kahlo, Mexico’s greatest artist and one of the most popular and successful artists of the twentieth century. Her early life was changed irrevocably by a tragic and traumatic accident which had a profound effect on her personal and artistic life. What she achieved from that point clearly demonstrates Kahlo’s determination to control a future that fate had attempted to destroy.
She married the established and older artist Diego Rivera and her relationship with him (and other men and women) had a significant impact on her work. Her work is uncompromising and challenging and it also became intensely introspective and revealing.
A brilliant portraitist, her most carefully observed subject was always herself and her representation of how events affect women.
This course has been completed.
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Jazz - America's Art Form
Tutor: Steve Millward
3 Thursday Evenings
Thursday 20th, 27th January & 3rd February 2022
7.30pm - 9.30pm
From its humble origins in the cultural melting-pot of New Orleans, jazz became a national, and ultimately an international, phenomenon. Initially, it served as the accompaniment to all manner of social occasions but by the 1920s it was also an art music, of crucial importance to the Harlem Renaissance. We will trace the progress of jazz from its source right up to the dawn of World War 11, by which time it had also captivated European audiences – and dancers. Along the way, we will meet the early stars such as Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Django Reinhardt and Fats Waller and take an in-depth look at Duke Ellington, whose career as the greatest composer/bandleader in jazz spanned some fifty years.
20th January – Jazz – The New Music
27th January – Jazz in Europe
3rd February – Duke Ellington
This course has been completed.
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Louis Armstrong
The Great Land Robbery
Tutor: Birgitta Hoffman
3 Monday Lectures
Monday 24th, 31st January & 7th February 2022
10.00am - 12.00pm
Throughout history periods of landholdings in common alternate with periods when individuals assert their sole right to use land or derive income from it. In this series we will look at three periods in Britain which became a defining feature for the history of the island.
Monday 24th January – Tudor period: Thomas Moore’s Utopia and the great requirement of the wool-sheep for land.
Monday 31st January – 18th century England: Enclosure acts, enclosing the common land in Cheshire.
Monday 7th February – 18/19th century Scotland: Clearance in the Highlands: from fermtouns to shooting estates.
This course has been completed.
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The Feudal System
FlyZero: Accelerating Zero Carbon Flight
Tutor: Simon Webb
Thursday Morning 10th February 2022
10.00am - 12.00pm
As other industries move away from fossil fuels to help address the climate crisis, aviation needs to not be left behind. FlyZero is a unique study, funded by the UK government and backed by the aerospace industry. Its aim is to explore the options and accelerate the technologies to enable zero carbon emissions flight. This talk will discuss the aircraft concepts and propulsion technologies that have been studied along with the associated challenges and opportunities and next steps the industry and the UK could take.
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This course has been completed.
Life in Post-Apartheid Namibia: The Worlds Most Marginalised People
Tutor: Christina Longden
Monday Morning 14th February 2022
10.00am - 12.00pm
Christina left Glossop to live and work alongside the world’s First People – the hunter-gatherer Kalahari Bushmen (or ‘San’). This session will look into apartheid and colonisation in Namibia, annexed by neighbouring South Africa after WW2 and the terrible legacy for indigenous people. Christina will examine the problems attempting to be addressed by international development workers and the experiencing of ‘do-gooding tourism’. The talk will be interspersed with plenty of light-hearted moments – including some of the challenges she faced when having her first child in the Kalahari and adjusting to African life as a ‘northerner’. Finally she will talk about how her life in Africa led to her current work as a writer and as Director of the Lorna Young Foundation – helping impoverished farming communities in Africa
This course has been completed.
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A House in Namibia
British Politics Abroad & at Home
2 Afternoon Lectures
Tutor: Kevin Harrison
Monday Afternoon 28th February 2022
1.30pm - 3.30pm
(1) Foreign Policy & Britain: continuities and change
Britain has been a major player in world politics for over 300 years: as a European and then a global power. Churchill talked of Britain’s unique place at the centre of ‘three circles’ of the Atlantic/USA, the Empire/Commonwealth, and Europe, so fortunately enabling the UK to remain a major power in the post-1945 world. This talk looks at how foreign affairs is assessed and the role of the UK as a significant player in the present world international system. In particular, an answer is sought to the question of the degree to which the ‘three circles’ still shape British foreign policy and the role of the UK in the modern world.
(2) Who will win the forthcoming General Election?
Monday Afternoon 7th March 2022
1.30pm - 3.30pm
At present, there is a widespread view among pundits and academics alike (not to mention a few politicians!) that the next General Election (due not later than 2024) is already a forgone conclusion: the Conservatives will win and Labour will lose. Yet predictions about the outcome of votes (however confidently given) often prove wide of the mark. This is likely to be the case for the forthcoming general election. Will the ‘Red Wall’ in the North hold firm for the Tories? Will Labour make major inroads in the ‘Blue Wall’ in the South?
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This course has been completed.
The Jacobite Rebellions, Particularly Bonnie Prince Charlie & The Rising of 1745
Tutor: Tim Cockitt
Thursday Afternoon 3rd March 2022
1.30pm - 3.30pm
The Jacobite Rebellions can be most simply described as the various attempts, from 1689 onwards, to restore the claimant from the House of Stuart to the throne of England. The most famous rebellions were in 1715 and 1745. The ’45 was led by Bonnie Prince Charlie (who was romantic in various senses of that word), and Manchester was significant to that rebellion.
This course has been completed.
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Jacobite broadside - Rebellion Displayed: Most humbly Inscribed to his Sacred Majesty King George
Don't Shoot the Messenger - A History of Poster Art
Tutor: Frank Vigon
Thursday Morning 10th March 2022
10.00am - 12.00pm
What started as legitimate customer information has become an intrusive element in our everyday lives, pursuing us through the newspapers, billboards, television, cinema and burrowing into the very depths of our private emails to elicit personal details that make us ever more vulnerable to being manipulated into making choices that may not always be in our best interests.
The debate about advertising includes issues like the morality of the interaction, the veracity of the claims, exploitation and sexual objectification. There is also the possible harm caused thereby to the individual and society.
There is a libertarian aspect to the debate which states that individuals should be free to make choices and that advertising offers knowledge and information to the wider public that bring opportunities for life enrichment. But when those enriched are the beneficiaries of the multinational corporations and corporate interests it is arguable that uncontrolled freedom to persuade and cajole the consumer into purchases and lifestyles that they might otherwise be better avoiding strikes at the very roots of our democratic expectations.
Yet the originality of the contemporary advertiser is something to be admired, especially in terms of the sheer ingenuity and artistic innovation. There are also many instances where public interest advertising has changed and preserved lives for the better. But everything comes with a Government Health Warning: “Caveat Emptor…..”.
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This course has been completed.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Poster for the exhibition for the artists' group "Die Brücke" at the Arnold Gallery Dresden
An Introduction to the Archaeology of Glossop & District
Tutor: Roger Hargreaves
Monday Afternoon 14th March 2022
1.30pm - 3.30pm
A sprint through 4,500 years of local history, drawing on work done by members of GLAS (the Glossopdale & Longdendale Archaeological Society) and Glossop Heritage Trust. We will look (very briefly!) at about 30 sites, dating from the Bronze Age to World War Two, some well-known, others much less so (and there are one or two we can’t talk about!). Some will be below ground, some above – archaeology isn’t just about things below ground, it’s also about understanding old buildings, many of which have hidden histories.
Some sites have been recognised only very recently, and virtually none have been fully investigated. There is, therefore, a great deal more to do.
This course has been completed.
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Graham Greene: Spy Novels & Spying
Tutor: Creina Mansfield
2 Thursdays 17th & 24th March 2022
1.30pm - 3.30pm
Graham Greene began spying early. Then, when he was recruited into MI6, he worked with Kim Philby, the most notorious spy of them all. Greene thought the firm - as insiders called the British secret service – would disapprove of his comic spy novel Our Man in Havana (1958). But it was his second spy novel, The Human Factor (1978), that was so close to the mark that he set it aside for over ten years.
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This course has been completed.
Graham Greene 1975