Documentary videography Durham has been part of my work with universities since early on, and this piece is one of the first examples. In November 2015 I filmed a public workshop in Prior’s Hall at Durham Cathedral, part of the Being Human Festival, and it was one of the first times I properly saw how interdisciplinary Durham University’s research culture is, archaeologists and theologians at the same table as members of the public, all handling the same medieval coins and asking very different questions about them.

The workshop centred on Religion and Money: Economy of Salvation in the Middle Ages, a research project led by Professor Svein H. Gullbekk of the University of Oslo and funded by the Norwegian Research Council, looking at how coins functioned as religious offerings in medieval churches. Professor Giles Gasper presented at the event, drawing connections between medieval Norwegian coin-offering practices and comparable traditions in Tonga’s Methodist communities today.

Documentary Videography Durham: Filming an Open Workshop

I kept the filming setup minimal, enough for clean visuals and sound, without anything that might make people self-conscious about handling genuine medieval coins in front of a camera. That mattered here more than usual, since the whole point of the session was letting people touch and question the objects directly.

One line from the day has stayed with me since. A participant, turning over a coin recovered from a Norwegian church, said simply: “You’re almost holding the past in your hand.”

This was early days for me in documentary videography work with Durham, and its willingness to put researchers from completely different disciplines round the same table as the public, part of the wider Being Human Festival, is something I’ve kept looking for in the university work I’ve taken on since.