University of Birmingham & The Royal Shakespeare Company

Film

2022

About The Collaboration
The exhibition tells visitors the story of a friendship and how this led to the creation of the first Shakespeare library in the world. The library is now home to thousands of items of Shakespearean history, including photos, music scores, programmes and playbills.

The Briefs
Following on from the successful World Stage films, we were asked to produce more films for the ‘everything to everybody campaign’. We teamed up with Casey Bailey (Birmingham Poet Laureate 2020-2022) to create a film called ‘Bodily Anguish’ which was a tribute to Ira Aldridge. The exhibition brings to life the Shakespeare Memorial Library with objects from the collection and new responses to Birmingham’s distinctive Shakespeare heritage in film and spoken word. The exhibition challenges visitors to think about what culture means to them today and how they themselves can effect change in the city.

The films are now being used on a variety of social channels, blogs and websites. The films were also part of the commonwealth games festival week.

The Everything to Everybody project is a collaboration between the University of Birmingham and Birmingham City Council, with funding contributed by National Lottery Heritage Fund.