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Public Engagement

Strange Sickness game campaign success

22 December 202022 December 2020 / aberdeenregisters / Leave a comment

The Kickstarter campaign for Strange Sickness wrapped up with an amazing 220 backers and 132% funding support, following a focused three-week run which ended a minute before midnight on 17 December 2020.

The generous response to the campaign brought backers from Scotland and around the world to support the project. Practical support and encouragement from Opportunity North East Code Base (ONE CodeBase) has been integral to the project.

Backing for the game exceeded the initial target and the first stretch goal. This means the game will include a prologue, to precede the main narrative section of play. Here the player will be introduced to Aberdeen and its inhabitants and hear reports of frightening illnesses from elsewhere in Scotland and overseas. Player decisions made in the prologue will affect the main narrative which follows.

The campaign received some great press coverage including in The Times, the Press and Journal, The National, the Evening Express and on ScotlandIS and The Scottish Games Network.

The campaign page for the project may be found at www.kickstarter.com. Early 2021 will see development underway by the project’s creative team!

Building a new game to bring the burgh records to life

01 December 202022 December 2020 / aberdeenregisters / Leave a comment
Strange Sickness campaign banner by Alana Bell

Strange Sickness is a narrative game about fear, disease and community. It is also an encounter with history, through the Aberdeen council registers.

The player will take on the role of a member of Aberdeen’s burgh council in the late 1490s as a plague epidemic is taking hold in Scotland. You must decide how to protect the city against the arrival of the disease by land or sea. You navigate through the game by linking to different parts of a branching narrative, deciding when to seek further information and how to respond to the threat of plague. The narrative plays out in different ways, with different endings, based on these decisions.

The project, led by William Hepburn and Jackson Armstrong, is newly launched on Kickstarter. If the project meets its funding target, the creative team will be led by William, building upon his experience in Playing in the Archives and with Who Killed David Dun?. William will bring his skills as a historian together with game designer Katharine Neil (Astrologaster and Over the Alps) and illustrator Alana Bell (graduate of Gray’s School of Art, 2020).

Strange Sickness is a non-profit project. William and Jackson are giving their time for free. The funds raised in this campaign will recover the costs of creating the game, delivering the rewards, and ensuring Katharine and Alana’s time is funded.

All profits from sales of the game after the Kickstarter campaign will support the Lord Provost’s Charitable Trust, for as long as the Trust is fundraising for Aberdeen-based registered charities to help individuals, families and communities across the city experiencing severe financial hardship as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Kickstarter campaign has launched with a great start in its first few days, so far with some 120 backers and reaching 66% of its total goal. The campaign page for the project may be found at www.kickstarter.com.

For some recent publicity around the campaign see the University of Aberdeen news item and the blog at The Scottish Games Network.

Songs of Medieval Aberdeen performed in the Scottish Parliament

11 March 202001 December 2020 / aberdeenregisters / Leave a comment

Last evening ‘Songs of Medieval Aberdeen’ went to Holyrood, for a reception, presentations and performance of the new music written by Dr Claire Hawes and Aberdeen-based musicians Davy Cattanach and Paddy Buchanan. The three were joined by percussionist Craig Spink.

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L-R: Senior Vice Principal Karl Leydecker, Cabinet Secretary Fiona Hyslop, Dr Claire Hawes, Lewis Macdonald MSP

The performance, held within the Scottish Parliament’s Garden Lobby, was hosted by Lewis Macdonald MSP and introduced by Cabinet Secretary Fiona Hyslop MSP. Senior Vice-Principal Professor Karl Leydecker spoke on behalf of the University of Aberdeen which is celebrating its 525th anniversary this year.

The set included the songs composed and performed by the trio last year, at the celebration to launch the Aberdeen Registers Online, and a new song, ‘Who Killed Davy Dun’, inspired by the game developed by Dr William Hepburn in 2019 in connection with an event he designed for the Granite Noir festival in 2017.

20200310_193014 crop

L-R: Davy Cattanach, Craig Spink, Claire Hawes, Paddy Buchanan.

City Archivist Phil Astley transported council register volumes seven and eight from Aberdeen to Parliament, so that they could be displayed for guests. The volumes were open to the pages containing the 1505 ‘aquavite’ entry, and the 1499 entry mentioning ‘brokin folkis’. The latter inspired the musicians to write a song with that title.

Dr Claire Hawes addressing guests
Dr Claire Hawes addressing guests
Fiona Hyslop MSP addressing guests
Fiona Hyslop MSP addressing guests

The performance involved a set of five songs, each introduced by Dr Hawes who explained the creative process behind their composition.

It was an exciting evening, demonstrating on a national stage the rich creative work that has been derived from the Aberdeen burgh records!

Follow this link to the University of Aberdeen news item about the event.

Celebration at the Town House

20 June 201901 December 2020 / aberdeenregisters / 1 Comment

On the evening of 14 June a special event was held in the Town House to mark the completion of the Law in the Aberdeen Council Registers project.

ACC_4298FB

L-R: Vice-Principal Professor Marion Campbell, Dr Andrew Simpson, Dr Edda Frankot, Dr William Hepburn, Lord Provost Barney Crockett, Dr Jackson Armstrong, Dr Claire Hawes, City Archivist Mr Phil Astley. Photo Credit: Norman Adams / Copyright Aberdeen City Council.

The eight earliest-surviving council register volumes were on display, and music and talks highlighted vignettes from the new resource created by this project, Aberdeen Registers Online: 1398–1511. Lord Provost Barney Crockett spoke on behalf of the City of Aberdeen, and Vice-Principal Professor Marion Campbell on behalf of the University of Aberdeen.

The event opened with a performance on recorder by Ruaraidh Wishart, Ed Friday, Kate Friday, and Marie McLean of a special composition entitled Fantasia for a Doric Fishman. The piece drew inspiration from the so-called ‘Fishman’, one of the most well-known decorations in the registers (see ARO-2-0102-01). Until recently moving to Abertay University, Ruaraidh Wishart was a senior archivist with the Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives.

Short talks and highlights were given by LACR members, including Jackson Armstrong, Phil Astley, Edda Frankot, Andrew Simpson, and Claire Hawes. The evening also showcased some creative follow-on projects in response to the registers.

William Hepburn introduced Playing in the Archives, his Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Creative Economies Engagement Fellowship, which investigates how Aberdeen’s registers could provide the inspiration for video game development. William explained how he is assessing the effectiveness of video games as a scholarly medium for examining the burgh records and the historical subjects they inform.

Claire Hawes and musicians Davy Cattanach and Paddy Buchanan performed four Songs from Medieval Aberdeen. Claire’s introduction to their music explained that their composition project was made possible with a 2018 Creative Funding Award from Aberdeen City Council. The trio set out to explore how songwriters can use historical material in their work. These original songs were the result, inspired by stories and themes from the records, and the Scots language of the registers.

There was also a special cake, decorated by Aberdeen cake makers O’Caykx, which displayed some of the information about the words and languages of the registers in icing.

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ARO Infographic Cake: Showing proportions of Latin and vernacular words in each register through the scrumptious medium of icing. Photo credit: Jackson Armstrong.

The cake icing depicted the proportion of words in each register in Latin (dark icing) and Scots (light icing). The small amount of orange marked in registers five and six reflects the appearance of a small amount of Dutch (or Middle Low German) in those volumes. The later registers have a greater proportion of content in Scots, and a greater number of words overall. It was a delicious way to mark the completion of the project!

Songs from Medieval Aberdeen

24 May 201901 December 2020 / aberdeenregisters / 2 Comments

Dr Claire Hawes has collaborated with musicians Davy Cattanach and Paddy Buchanan to explore how songwriters can use historical material in their work. As part of the University of Aberdeen’s May Festival the trio performed today a set of original songs composed in response to the contents of the Aberdeen council registers.

Songs2 crop

The performance included an introduction by Claire into the nature of the collaboration, its steps and dialogues, and the question of how historians can contribute to the creative process. Claire, Davy and Paddy set out to answer the question by writing songs based on Aberdeen’s medieval town records. The introduction explained how the group encountered some expected differences between historical research and song writing, but also found some similarities.

The Songs from Medieval Aberdeen experiment was a success – resulting in composition of four songs, entitled Balingar, Kervel, Candilmas Time, The Brokin Folkis, and The Fisher Folk of Futy. Each song tells its own story from the Aberdeen registers, and was performed on guitar and bodhran with vocals in Scots. Claire’s introduction examined how the lyrics were crafted neither in Middle Scots nor Modern Scots (nor Doric), but still drew from the language of the registers.

A full audience in the Linklater Rooms at King’s College was given a special treat to hear these songs performed as a set for the first time. The trio said they were keen to record the songs when time allows!

The project was made possible with a Creative Funding Award from Aberdeen City Council.

Paddy and Davy

January Lectures on ‘The Common Books of Aberdeen, 1398-1511’

31 January 201901 December 2020 / aberdeenregisters / Leave a comment

This month LACR alumna Dr Claire Hawes delivered a pair of joint lectures for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the Scottish History Society.

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The subject was ‘The Common Books of Aberdeen’ and the presentation gave a fascinating overview of the historical richness of the council register volumes which have been at the core of the LACR project.  Claire delivered her talk to substantial audiences in Edinburgh on 14 January at the National Museum Scotland, and on 15 January in Aberdeen for the Aberdeen & North East Section of the Antiquaries. The lecture illuminated some of the aspects of medieval life that are apparent in the volumes: the role of crafts, the presence of animals, the regulation of behaviour, and the place of the burgh in the political affairs of the Scottish kingdom, to name just a few. The Scots language was also prominent in the colourful examples explored by Claire as she set out some of the ways in which the registers will serve as a bountiful resource for future research. Well done, Claire!

 

 

 

 

 

Lunchtime Talk: The Nicholas and other ships from medieval Aberdeen

05 June 201801 December 2020 / aberdeenregisters / 1 Comment

Nicholas
Nicholas 3
Nicholas 2

Please join us on Wednesday 6 June at the Maritime Museum in Aberdeen where Edda Frankot will be presenting brand-new findings about the ships that hailed from medieval Aberdeen, based on the transcriptons from the LACR project. Who sailed these ships, who owned them, were did they go and what did they carry? Most of the information that has survived is included in records of legal cases, so another important question is: why did the skippers, shipowners and merchants of Aberdeen end up in court? Find out on 6 June at 12.30 at the Maritime Museum. Admission free.

Explorathon ’16: Piracy in Medieval Aberdeen?

31 October 201601 December 2020 / aberdeenregisters / Leave a comment

explorathon-everyone

On Friday 30 September the ‘Law in the Aberdeen Council Registers’ (LACR) project team was joined by members of the public at the Maritime Museum in Aberdeen for an interactive presentation on ‘Piracy, plunder and shipwreck’ and aspects of the LACR project. The presentation was part of Explorathon ‘16 or European Researchers’ Night, an event staged on the same day in university cities throughout Europe.

The audience was welcomed by Chris Croly, Public Engagement Officer at the University of Aberdeen and one of the organisers of the Aberdeen Explorathon. Jackson Armstrong then introduced the Aberdeen registers, highlighting their importance as a source for the history of Aberdeen and its hinterland, and for its relations with the rest of Scotland and trading partners abroad. In the first section of the presentation Edda Frankot focussed in more detail on Aberdeen in its European context. Using a number of examples from the records themselves, Aberdeen’s role in late medieval piracy, plunder and shipwreck was illustrated. It appeared that the city did not prosecute any of its citizens that were active in capturing ships from other regions in northwestern Europe. One reason may have been that the men involved were the shipmasters and merchants (and at least one provost, Robert Davidson, and one admiral, the earl of Mar) who were also in charge of the city’s government and courts. But more important was perhaps the fact that the capture of the ships was most likely not considered to be piracy, but justified acts as part of maritime warfare, or as part of attempts to regain compensation for losses sustained abroad.1 During the presentation the members of the public present were quizzed on aspects of the subject of piracy, plunder and shipwreck and asked to vote on one of two answers. As the photo shows, the audience soon caught on to the line of questioning…

explorathon-audience

The second part of the presentation focussed on aspects of the LACR project. William Hepburn explained how the transcription process works and what difficulties can be encountered when transcribing fifteenth-century urban registers. The audience was also asked to try to read some words from the records, which proved quite difficult. Anna Havinga then turned the audience’s attention to linguistic aspects of the Aberdeen records, especially the bilingualism of the clerks who wrote the entries in the manuscripts. She then challenged the audience to link up words in old Scots with their modern English counterparts.

This short quiz ended with a plea for help to identify the meaning of a word that the project team had been unable to find. People were asked to send us their solutions via twitter, facebook or email. The word in question appears in a number of entries on the payment for a large number of barrels of this item of merchandise imported from Zeeland in the Netherlands: ‘iggownis’.2 Eventually, the best suggestion was given by Lucy Dean, who responded to a second appeal for help on facebook on 3 October: onions. This word is usually spelled with ‘ing-’ in Middle Scots, which is why we had been unable to locate it in the Dictionary of the Scottish Language (http://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/ing3oun ). This exercise just shows how useful crowdsourcing can be: there is a great community of people out there with a very large combined knowledge. Thank you to everyone who contributed with suggestions!


  1. With regards to medieval Scottish piracy, see David Ditchburn, ‘Piracy and war at sea in late medieval Scotland’, in: T.C. Smout (ed.), Scotland and the Sea (Edinburgh 1992),  35-58 and ‘The pirate, the policeman and the pantomime star: Aberdeen’s alternative economy in the early fifteenth century’, Northern Scotland 12 (1992),  19-34. For the early modern period, see Steve Murdoch, The Terror of the Seas? Scottish Maritime Warfare, 1513-1713 (Leiden and Boston 2010). ↩
  2. ACR, vol. 5, pp. 358, 359, 361 (12, 14, 16 March and 2 April 1459). ↩

Official launch

14 June 201601 December 2020 / aberdeenregisters / Leave a comment

Project and website launched at Aberdeen Town House

The ‘Law in the Aberdeen Council Registers’ project and the ‘aberdeenregisters.org’ website were launched officially at a civic reception in the magnificent Town and County Hall at Aberdeen Town House on Wednesday, 8 June 2016.

civic launch

Aberdeen’s Lord Provost, George Adam, spoke on behalf of the City, while University Librarian, Diane Bruxvoort, represented the University of Aberdeen. Moderating proceedings was project partner and City Archivist Phil Astley, who also spoke briefly, as did project director Jackson Armstrong. All expressed their delight that the eight UNESCO-recognized volumes of the Aberdeen Council Registers would be made available to a wider audience as part of this collaborative effort. Formal proceedings ended with a brief presentation of a collection highlight by Edda Frankot. A written version of this presentation, which focussed on the use of memory in the establishing of the age of a girl as part of a court case in 1507, will appear on this blog in due course.

The event received some press coverage on Wednesday and Thursday. STV News reported on the event in their local news bulletin which included a brief interview with Phil Astley:

STV1

The Press and Journal also covered the story, both in their North East and Aberdeen editions and online:

P&J 9 June

In light of the press coverage we wish to be clear that the two partner institutions involved in the present project are the University of Aberdeen (Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies) and the Aberdeen City Council (Aberdeen City & Aberdeenshire Archives). We also wish to note that the present project seeks to produce an accurate and full transcription of the register volumes. The translation of that corpus into modern English is not intended; that is a separate opportunity for the future which will require its own specific funding. Our objective is to provide the transcribed text for a wide range of potential applications and analyses.

Recent Posts

  • Strange Sickness game campaign success
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  • Strange Sickness game campaign success
  • What does ‘strange sickness’ mean?
  • Building a new game to bring the burgh records to life
  • New book out today! Cultures of Law in Urban Northern Europe
  • Volunteers build list of provosts, bailies and sergeands in the ARO

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