Updates & Blog Posts

Modernist Hull: Our New Walking Guide

We’re very pleased to share a new element of our project, Modernist Hull: A Walking Guide to the Post-war City. Long-time followers of the Half Life project will remember that our research started with a series of walking workshops and tours of the city – sometimes led by us and sometimes led by members of Read More…

Why Hull’s Cream Telephone Boxes Matter

This piece by Charlotte, a reflection on the recent listing of nine Hull and East Yorkshire K8 Telephone Boxes, was first published by Hull Is This, a local media platform in Hull, in March 2023. The setting is a balmy evening sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s.  A group of us are playing Read More…

“The Last Blitzed Building in Britain”: the battle over memorial and memory in the ruins of Hull’s National Picture Theatre.

This week (7th -9th March) our heritage partner and all-round great bunch of guys at Hull History Centre will be hosting an exhibition commemorating the 82nd anniversary of the bombing of the National Picture Theatre (NPT). Admission is free and from 10am-noon there’s an opportunity to share your wartime family history. The NPT holds a Read More…

Our Symposium: Reflections One Month On

Back in July, we hosted our first project symposium, ‘Understanding Place, Memory, and Identity in the Post War City’, at Hull’s Humber Street Gallery. As well as rounding the day up in a blog post by Jim, which you can read here, we also asked our attendees for their own creative responses to the day. Read More…

Our First Report: Community Heritage, Place Identity, and the Built Environment

  People’s relationships to place and to the built environment are an increasingly important part of the heritage landscape. At the mid-point of our project, our first report, Community Heritage, Place Identity, and the Built Environment, explores what we’ve found out so far about the relationship between individual & collective identity, heritage, and place. Over Read More…

“You know, if you’re a Hull person born and bred, that’s in you somewhere”: Hull’s Maritime History (and some Half Blitz news)

Working in Hull, it’s pretty much impossible to undertake a project exploring place, identity, and heritage without thinking about the city’s maritime story. In our latest blog post, Charlotte dedicates a bit of time to sharing some of the memories of Hull’s maritime past (and present) that we’ve collected so far – and shares some Read More…

Hull & Me: Pat Broderick

In this blog series, we talk to people about their connections to Hull and what the city means to them. In this post Pat Broderick tells us about moving to Hull as a ‘Westie’ and never wanting to leave… Thanks for chatting to us! First things first – tell us a bit more about you. Read More…

The Cinema City

Cinemas play an important role in Hull’s past, present, and future. In this blog post we share some of the stories we’ve collected in the past year and explore the place of ‘the pictures’ in people’s stories of the city. If we were to rank the types of place that come up again and again Read More…

Hull & Me: Alison Keld

In this blog series, we talk to people about their connections to Hull and what the city means to them. In this post we chat to Alison Keld about 2017, the impact of the blitz, and nights out dancing in Hull. Thanks for chatting to us! First things first – tell us a bit more Read More…