The Quality of Academic Life
In a community the size of a small UK village, it’s difficult to experience a wide variety of opportunities for the people who live here, but thanks to the Shackleton Scholarship Fund Quality of Life Scholarship, it makes those opportunities a real possibility.
Katherine Anteney, a bookbinder and printmaker from Southampton visited the islands in mid January to give a series of workshops both in Stanley and out on the West. Katherine taught eleven workshops during her three week stay allowing participants to create lino printing blocks to collate into a commemorative book. The workshops were very well attended with a group of eight to ten people at a time. Some were held over a weekend where they cut and printed the tiles on one day and bound the prints into a book on the following day. “I’d like to thank the Shackleton committee for giving me this opportunity because it’s just been amazing,” Katherine told FITV during her final workshop held at the Community School, “I had really no idea what the Falkland Islands was like and I’ve fallen in love with the place completely.”
It was Heather Norman, of the Crafty Old Travellers, who put Katherine forward for the scholarship after she attended one of Katherine’s classes in Southampton. Katherine is one of the workshop directors for Red Hot Press, a company which aims to develop an appreciation and understanding of fine art print making. So impressed was Katherine with the Falklands that she was eager to return to the UK and start on some artwork based on her time here, “I think I got as much out of it as the people that have come on the workshops,” she said, “My big plan is to come back in 2018 and run another series of workshops so hopefully I’ll have people signed up for that.”
The Shackleton Scholarship Fund is not only about adding quality of life to the Falkland Islands. They also have a scholarship aimed for academic study into nature, social sciences, culture and many other topics. A recent recipient of the academic fund was former Governor of the Falkland Islands, Nigel Haywood.
Nigel is in his second year of research for a PhD on the Falklands fritillary, the only breeding species of butterfly in the Falklands. He was in the islands over Christmas and New Year hopping between Stanley, Darwin, Bleaker Island and Roy Cove collecting data. The butterfly is probably remembered by locals as flashes of bright orange out in camp. “There’s so little known about it,” Nigel said when he was interviewed by FITV, “some of the genetic work I’m doing is just to establish what it is as much as anything else.” Nigel used a portable weather station to record wind speed, wind direction and temperature at egg sites for the butterfly.
Both the Quality of Life and the Academic Scholarships give tremendous opportunity for individuals to work on projects in the islands and to introduce a skills not normally accessible to the Falklanders.
“It is a great honour to be given an award,” said Nigel, “and the fact that it is given in the name of Shackleton is rather humbling.”
