Shakespeare And Creativity - Brian gambles

What really attracts me about the Shakespeare and Creativity programmes is the opportunity to push Shakespeare in his context, in society. And it's worth just reflecting for a moment on the origins of the great Shakespeare collection that we have in the Library of Birmingham. This all started with a devastating fire which actually destroyed most of the collections of the Library in 1879. What followed from that fire was a civic pride movement which actually led to the formation of a Shakespeare Club and the donation of large quantities of material to the library, so our collections arose, phoenix-like if you like, from the ashes of that fire. But they are, in their own right, they are a manifestation of civic pride, of civic engagement, that people wanted to do good for the city and to promote learning in the city. I think Shakespeare would have liked that. The collection of Shakespeare material at the Library of Birmingham is amongst the best collections of Shakespeare anywhere in the world. As well as the important and valuable folio collections, it's particularly strong on Shakespeare in foreign material, Shakespeare from the diaspora if you like, and it also contains a lot of ephemeral material that is perhaps not traditionally so well collected - playbills, reviews, newspaper cuttings and the like which give a great contextual illustration to Shakespeare, Shakespeare and performance, Shakespeare in society, Shakespeare's creativity down the years. We're also really pleased that we've managed in the new library design to celebrate the design of the Shakespeare Memorial Room. This is an interesting space in the library. It was actually built in 1882 to house the Shakespeare Collection, but within a quarter of a century the collection had actually outgrown the room itself which was used as a public reading room in the library which was eventually demolished in the early 1970s to make way for the Central Library which we've just vacated. The Shakespeare Memorial Room is a beautiful panelled room but it wasn't well presented in the previous Central Library and we're really pleased that we've been able to give it pride of place in the very summit of the new library, it will be a destination for visitors to the library. The new Library project started in 2007 and has been a development that's taken many years to complete. It's the largest public library in Europe and holds amongst the most significant collections of archives, photographic collections and rare printed book collections in any public library. We're enormously proud to have it in Birmingham, it's a great statement of belief in the value of culture and learning, in redefining a city for the 21st century and one that I think citizens of Birmingham and visitors to the city should be really, really proud of.