Kate Arnold

Musician/Electro-Medievalist
PhD (Arabic poetry, Old French song)
Hammered dulcimer, strings
Phantasmaphone inventor
"Absolutely extraordinary" - BBC Radio 3

[Kevin Thomas - Birmingham Heritage walking tours @Ktphotouk]

This Thursday, we’re exploring Soho Hill, Hockley and Handsworth.
From Harriet Samuel’s remarkable jewellery factory, a striking Arts & Crafts building, to a hidden mosaic and a Pugin monastery, uncovering the stories Birmingham chooses to ignore.
#WalkingTour #Birmingham

[Kate Arnold @DulcimerKate]

A pint of Ansell's Mild would have gone down a treat last night.

[Brumpic @Brumpic]

European Super Cup tie, Aston Villa v Barcelona, 26 January, 1983.
Tie took place over two legs in January 1983. The first leg was won by Barcelona 1–0 at the Camp Nou stadium, but Aston Villa won 3–0 at Villa Park after extra time to take a 3–1 aggregate win.

[Kate Arnold @DulcimerKate]

I do remember these being pretty much everywhere!

[Kevin Thomas - Birmingham Heritage walking tours @Ktphotouk]

Brutalist space-age planters in the Jewellery Quarter. Once found across Birmingham, now untended and unloved, surviving only because nobody’s bothered to remove them.

Not everything worth saving is Victorian. Birmingham’s concrete future is disappearing piece by piece.

[Kevin Thomas - Birmingham Heritage walking tours @Ktphotouk]

This Sunday, we uncover the hidden history of Birmingham’s canals.
Crime. An observatory. A sinking pub. A hospital that once imprisoned women in Birmingham.
These stories matter. They deserve to be told.
#Birmingham #Canal #Walkingtour

[Save Station Street, Birmingham @OldStationSt]

For two years, while we’ve been rabble rousing, Birmingham’s @flatpack festival have been working on a fully costed alternative to Glenbrook Property’s desire to bulldoze what was the UK’s oldest working cinema. The 116yr old Electric on Station St. Here are those plans:

[Peter Gabriel @itspetergabriel]

Peter was inducted as a solo artist into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on this day 12 years ago.

"Watch out for music. It should come with a health warning. It can be dangerous. It can make you feel so alive, so connected to the people all around you, and connected to what you really are inside, and it can make you think that the world should and could be a much better place. And just occasionally it can make you very, very happy."

[SciFi Art @retroscifiart]

While there’s another big bland Dune film coming, a reminder that David Lynch made Dune in 1984 and it’s a (flawed) masterpiece. With Space Pugs.

[SciFi Art @retroscifiart]

Art by Michael Whelan for Foundation’s Edge by Isaac Asimov (1983. Acrylic on board). Easily a top 10 favourite book cover for me.

[SciFi Art @retroscifiart]

Art by Martyn and Roger Dean and Richard Clifton-Dey originally intended for Jeff Wayne’s 1977 War of the Worlds album, but never used.

[SciFi Art @retroscifiart]

Creating the miniatures in Star Trek The Motion Picture (1979). Images from Berton Pierce’s must-watch Sense of Scale documentary series on YouTube.

[SSCLE @latineast]

For today’s #ManuscriptMonday, we turn to a thirteenth-century vision of some pilgrims visiting the Tomb of Christ in the Holy Sepulchre Church as imagined in a French manuscript.

(BnF, Département des Manuscrits, Français 2825, f. 1)

[Fiona Chartres @chartres_Fiona]

Victorian tiles at St Peter's, Lowick for #TilesOnTuesday
The dark green background set the varied designs off perfectly.

[Ali A Olomi @aaolomi]

in medieval occultism each planet is associated with a secret science. The Moon is connected with the powers of the soul and dreams

For example, using lunar secrets one could probe the dreams of another or influence them, or heal through touch known today as “laying of hands”

[Eleanor Parker @ClerkofOxford]

'When I see blosmes springe,
And hear foules song,
A swete love-longynge
Myn herte thourhout stong,
Al for a love newe
That is so swete and trewe,
That gladieth al my song...'

A medieval springtime poem for Eastertide: https://t.co/lXKwvyuXB1

[Dr Anne E Bailey @AnneEBailey1]

St Cuthbert's tomb, Durham Cathedral.😇
His medieval shrine would have been in the same location.
📸2025

[Save Station Street, Birmingham @OldStationSt]

Did you know the Nazis almost blew up the birthplace of Black Sabbath in Birmingham?

7 years before baby Ozzy arrived the car showroom next door to The Crown took a direct hit. The space next to The Crown has been an empty or a car park since 1941.

[Kevin Thomas - Birmingham Heritage walking tours @Ktphotouk]

This Thursday, I’m the speaker at the Yardley Conservation Society, exploring Birmingham’s bold and brilliant Arts & Crafts movement — the buildings, the makers, and the minds behind it
Once home to the Birmingham Guild of Handicraft, whose motto said it all: By Hand and Hammer

[Kate Arnold @DulcimerKate]

This Weds, 18th March, I'll be @SOAS talking about Arabic poetry from the crusading period.
Hybrid & free (but you need to register)!
Warning: may include performance 🎶🎵
https://t.co/IUOEDNGG4S

#medieval #Arabic #history #poetry

Image from British Library Add. MS. 22114. f.94

[Classy Arabic Poetry @ClassyArabic]

Arabic proverb of the day:
👑

"How sweet is the throne even if you only rule over a stone!"

It rhymes in Arabic:

yā ḥabbadhā l-imāra wa-law ʿalā l-ḥijāra

[Save Station Street, Birmingham @OldStationSt]

Failure to save the UK’s oldest working cinema is not good enough.

Failure to restore the birthplace of Black Sabbath & Heavy Metal is not good enough.

Action. Now. Birmingham and Brummies deserve better.