Welcome to the Welcome Inn. Your hosts, Jenny and Mark, would like to invite you to rest a while here and put your feet up. Have a look around and enjoy the many contributions from fellow travelers. Anyone can stay at the Welcome Inn – it’s free – all we ask is that you contribute a ‘traveler’s token’ for the enjoyment of your fellow travelers to our Inn – a story, a piece of music or art, or a recipe. Please don’t forget to sign our Visitors Book.
Our cover photo shows the Falcon Inn, Petty Cury located in the city where we are based – Cambridge. The Falcon was the largest of the Cambridge’s many medieval galleried inns and was built around 1500. For over 400 years it was one of the great meeting places in Cambridge. Patrons included: Elizabeth 1 (1533-1603), Mary I “Bloody Mary” Mary Tudor (1516 – 1558). The writers Ted Hughes (1930 – 1998) and Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963) first met at a party in Falcon Yard. From 1960-72 the yard provided meeting rooms for the Cambridge Footlights and the likes of Peter Cook, Clive Anderson, Germaine Greer, Clive James, Tim Brooke-Taylor, several ‘Pythons’ and Stephen Fry (to name only a few).
Hospitality, Storytelling and Integration in a Mobile World
This website is part of an ongoing project run by Dr Jenny Mander on Hospitality, Storytelling and Integration in a Mobile World with the support of the University of Cambridge, Newnham College, and the Centre for Global Human Movement.
The project draws on academic research on the ethics of hospitality and the rise of the novel in the context of early modern globalisation and colonial commerce to foster greater understanding of the power of storytelling to shape individual and collective identities in ways that promote rather than hinder the growth and well-being of individuals and local communities.
Working in partnership with English Pocket Opera Company, it aims to reflect upon and contribute to local government strategies towards full social inclusion and cohesion using arts-based thinking and practice.
Read more on University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement website.
About Us
Dr Jenny Mander
Host at the Welcome Inn.
Dr Jenny Mander, Faculty of Modern Languages, Associate Director for the Study of Global Human Movement, University of Cambridge began her research on the theory of narrative with reference to autobiographical fiction of the French eighteenth century. She has since continued to publish on the history of the ‘rise’ of the modern novel and increasingly on early globalisation, colonialism, the ethics of hospitality and intercultural relations from the age of Enlightenment.
Mark Tinkler
Music Host at the Welcome Inn
Mark Tinkler is artistic director of English Pocket Opera Company (EPOC) and the Cambridge-based CAMS Music Trust (CMT). He is an ex St. Johns College, Cambridge chorister and an ex-opera singer who now works as an opera director and educator. He has taught at many leading teaching institutions including Queen Mary’s (London University), Central Saint Martin’s College of Art, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music. Mark founded EPOC in 1993 – a music charity that, amongst other things, produces opera for, by and with children – often up to 50,000 in any one year. He lives in Cambridge and, as artistic director of CMT, runs many community music events, the Cambridge Community Orchestras and leads workshops in schools and the local community.
Katie Hawks
Host at the Welcome Inn
Katie Hawks is a medieval historian studying monasteries, which were famous for hospitality and ale. She is also a musicologist, and has written lots of stuff about the music of Handel. Katie is a keen choral singer and conductor and has run and conducted a number of choirs in Cambridge and the South-East. Since being back in Cambridge after some years away, she founded an all-female renaissance choir, St Radegund’s Voices, and plays cello (very badly) in and sometimes conducts (a bit better) the Cambridge Community Orchestra.
English Pocket Opera Company
EPOC performing a ‘Ring Round the World’ workshop in a Camden school.
English Pocket Opera Company (EPOC) is based in a Camden primary school in London and works with up to 50,000 children per year, producing musically-driven, multi-disciplinary programmes in partnership with a range of social, artistic and educational organisations. The company exists to inspire creativity and build confidence and social skills through music to people to realise their full potential. EPOC aims to demonstrate the significant benefits that music can bring and its power to transform lives and communities. Lockdown 2020 has meant that EPOC has had to postpone performances at the Royal Albert Hall, a whole school performance of The History of Music (in 60 mins) and community performances of Bizet’s Carmen in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
By Dr. Jenny Mander Each community tells a story about itself, official and unofficial, joyous and sad. In turn, local government tells and re-tells a public narrative, past and present, of the local community. Sometimes the story is obvious – a local festival, or a community project – and sometimes more hidden – the plaques …
On Feb 5th 2020 at the Michaelhouse cafe We ran a seminar with Dr William O’Reilly (History) reflecting on ways of restoring agency and humanity to migrant experiences. William O’Reilly is University Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History. He is the Leibniz Chair in History, German Institute for Maritime History (Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum) and is a …
