Printed ballads from early modern England were remarkable things. They were hugely popular songs and the first widespread and broadly affordable types of printed word. Thousands of ballad sheets were churned from the printing presses to be read and sung to familiar tunes in households, on the streets, in the workplace and at the alehouse. The woodcuts (illustrations) that appeared on many of these ballads were a fundamental part of their appeal, catching potential buyers’ attention, indicating what the content of the song was – love, crime, politics, tragedy, humour, history, death – and adding layers of meaning to help people interpret the music that they accompanied.

This workshop gives you the unique opportunity to design and print your own illustration to accompany a new song, one directly inspired by the lives of people who lived in early modern England.

Creative History

The workshop grows out of the Exeter Arts and Culture Creative Fellowship that brings musician, composer and performer Chris Hoban together with historian Dr Laura Sangha to discover more playful and experimental ways to approach historic wills. Chris and Laura are investigating the 25,000 wills that Laura is transcribing and analysing as part of a team of researchers on The Leverhulme Trust funded research project ‘The Material Culture of Wills, England 1540-1709’. These are documents that illuminate the lives of testators in vivid and surprising ways – they are at once character portraits, life stories, tools to negotiate relationships, and incomplete and mysterious fragments, perfect raw material to be transformed into new words, sounds and images.

Chris has taken inspiration from the collaboration to do just that, composing a series of songs, each exploring a will in the collection. We are now offering you the chance to engage with our collaborative process and to in turn take a creative approach by designing and printing an image to illustrate one of the songs.

Attendance is free but places are limited – please register here on Eventbrite.

Preparation and Practicalities

Attendees will be sent materials and instructions 10 days in advance of the workshop, including (a) transcriptions of original wills (b) Chris’ song lyrics, inspired by the original wills. Attendees will be asked to use these to prepare a ballad illustration/design to accompany one of the songs.

At the workshop itself Chris will perform the songs, and we will create and then print our designs.

We will also offer pre-workshop Zoom meeting where you can learn more about the wills research and fellowship and ask any questions you may have about the workshop. This will be on Thursday 1 May at 10:30am. It will also be recorded for those unable to attend at that time.

Find out more

If you wish, you can also have a look around two online collections of ballads: 100 Ballads and the English Broadside Ballad Archive. Both contain images, transcriptions and recordings of early modern ballads, as well as further information about what they were and how they work. We recommend in particular:

Christopher Marsh, ‘Texts, tunes and pictures: engaging with broadside ballads’.

Simone Chess, ‘Woodcuts: Methods and Meanings of Ballad Illustration’.

Hero image: copyright Emily Vine

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Location: Creative Quadrant

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Wills as Windows onto the Past: Print Workshop