Literary Prize 2022 Winner and Runner-up Announcement
Each year a question or quote exploring Franklin’s relevance in our time is open for interpretation in 1000-1500 words. The competition is exclusively for young writers, aged 18-25, with a first prize of £750, and a second prize of £500.
This year, our quote for interpretation was;
‘The Eyes of other People are the Eyes that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should want neither fine Clothes, fine Houses nor Fine Furniture.’ Letter to Benjamin Vaughan, 1784.
We received some excellent entries to our 2022 Prize and we are proud to announce the names of the two young writers that were voted as the winner and runner-up by our team of judges;
Daniel is 23 and from County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. He has just begun a PhD in English Literature at Queen’s University Belfast.
George is 25 and from Derbyshire, England. He is a graduate of Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Broadcast and Journalism. He is currently the Editor of the Nottingham-based arts and culture magazine LeftLion, which has a readership of around 50,000.
If you would like to read their entries for the 2022 Prize, please click on their names to view their work.
In March 2023, the winner, runner-up and other shortlisted writers will be invited to Benjamin Franklin House for a special award ceremony to receive their prizes and meet the judging panel for the 2022 Prize.
The 2022 Literary Prize Judges are;
- Dr. Márcia Balisciano, Director of Benjamin Franklin House
- Lord Guy Black, Executive Director of the Telegraph Media Group
- Wendy Moore, English journalist, author, and historian
- Dr. Huw David, Development Director at Wolfson College, University of Oxford
- Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group and Board Member of Benjamin Franklin House
We would like to congratulate those on our shortlist as well as everyone who entered this year’s Prize.
If you are interested in participating in our 2023 Literary Prize, please look out for announcements on our website. The quote for next year’s competition will be announced at the 2022 award ceremony and posted shortly after.
Family & Education Events Calendar 2023
Our 2023 Event Calendar is here!
Throughout the year, Benjamin Franklin House hosts a wide variety of fun-filled family events for all to enjoy!
View/Download a PDF of our calendar: Education Events Calendar 2023
Join us as we celebrate the major holidays such as Easter, Halloween and Christmas with an 18th century twist.
We also celebrate some of the biggest US holidays of the year with celebration events for the 4th July and Thanksgiving.
In May, we will also be holding a special Coronation Celebration as part of the city-wide celebrations for the coronation of King Charles III. At Benjamin Franklin House, we will look back at the coronation of King George III, an event that Franklin was able to attend in person, as well as some other famous kings and queens of England from the past 1000 years of history!
Our new afterschool Science Club will also be kicking off in January, with monthly sessions until July. Each session will focus on a different topic in the KS2/3 Science curriculum including Electricity, Forces, the Human Body and Sound.
Finally, our Summer Season of Family Events will return in August with a weekly series of fun workshops that explore skills in Calligraphy, Archaeology and Portraiture.
Please note: Booking for each event will open roughly one month in advance. Specific dates for TBC events will be released roughly two months in advance.
View/Download a PDF of our calendar: Education Events Calendar 2023
House Highlights: Summer Break @ Ben’s House
Here are some of the highlights from our incredible summer season of family events at Benjamin Franklin House!
Over the month of August we held a number of events as part of our Summer Break @ Ben’s House programme. We learned all about Benjamin Franklin, 36 Craven Street and Georgian Britain as well as getting creative with lots of arts and crafts activities.
In our first week we recreated Franklin’s famous Key and Kite experiment using a Tesla Coil in our Student Science Centre. We each got an opportunity to create a bolt of electricity using our Windhurst Machine before heading down to Franklin’s Parlour to build some decorative kites!
Our second week focussed on the art of calligraphy and the importance of letters in 18th century communication. We deciphered one of Franklin’s own letters before writing our own using dip pens and ink. The workshop was certainly the messiest of them all with inky fingers all round! We also created our own parchment paper with some good old fashioned tea-staining.
The focus of our third week moved away from Franklin and on to one of our other famous residents, the anatomist William Hewson, who lived in the House from 1770-1774. We learned about the anatomy school once located in the House and examined our collection of bones that were unearthed in our basement. We then became archaeologists for the day and explored our collection of archaeology tools and artefacts. To end the session we built model skeletons before creating our own skeleton diagrams using cotton wool buds and glue!
The final week of Summer Break @ Ben’s House explored the history of portraiture and saw us learn some valuable skills in art history. We deciphered the symbols in several famous portraits from history before examining a collection of Franklin portraits to learn more about the man behind the canvass. We then got our paint pallets out to create portraits of ourselves to take home and frame for all to see!
