Friday 4 April 2025 saw us hosting a p ublic lecture held in conjunction with the Norfolk Contemporary Art Society (n-cas) in the Blake Studio. This presented an amazing opportunity to hear from Dr Hannah Higham, Senior Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts in London – one of the country’s most prestigious art institutions. Before joining in April 2023, she previously worked as the Senior Curator for the Henry Moore Foundation. Formerly, she has worked for Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts in Norfolk, so she was enjoying being back in the county. A large audience of n-cas members, NUA students, ONs and staff learned what an august institution the Royal Academy of Arts in London truly is. From the days of its first President Joshua Reynolds, its collections and exhibitions are rightly world famous. Hannah’s wide ranging and informative talk charted how it brilliantly mixes modernism with the Old Masters (including a priceless Michelangelo carving) in its amazing collections and exhibitions. She reflected on its essential mission to remain a pre-eminent educational institution for art and mused on the current challenges of its charitable funding model (receiving no help from either the State or the Crown). The audience left inspired to visit its exciting programme of upcoming exhibitions, detailed here: Exhibitions & Events | Royal Academy of Arts N-cas continues to attract high-calibre, interesting speakers on a wide variety of areas of contemporary creative art. Their talks are open to all and are very approachable and friendly. Further details of n-cas events will be posted here: Events — ncas and we look forward to welcoming them back on site for talks later this year and to them exhibiting in our Crypt Gallery in 2026 to mark its 70 th anniversary. Details of all of Norwich School’s eclectic selection of cultural events round site feature in our termly publication, At Close Quarters with the summer edition due out imminently. See: Publications | Norwich School . Do join us.

The plight of the humble coral, one of the marvels of the natural world, has been under the spotlight at Norwich School. We are a host site of the eastern region of the prestigious Royal Geographical Society (RGS), and we are always delighted to welcome them to the Blake Studio. On 19 March 2025 we enjoyed an excellent evening in their company hearing their latest lecture entitled Coral Reefs: From Darwin to Doomsday. The large audience of eager pupils, parents, staff, alumni and RGS members heard how the age-old process of tiny individual corals building up impressively huge reef structures has intrigued marine scientists for almost 200 years. It was Charles Darwin’s seminal research on this topic that first kicked off international interest, and research is still at the cutting edge of science today, as we seek to understand better the criticality of these vital ecosystems. The talk explored how corals reefs are fast becoming depressing barometers for biodiversity loss due to man-made global warming. We learned that, despite their amazing intrinsic resilience against natural disasters and rising and falling sea levels over millennia, the relentless combination of negative human factors such as pollution, thoughtless tourism and sea temperature warming means reefs are under threat like never before. Our guide for the evening was the highly esteemed academic and prolific author Tom Spencer. Tom is Emeritus Professor of Coastal Dynamics at the University of Cambridge and an internationally recognised expert in this field. He is currently working on a project on coral atoll 'habitability' in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. With a compelling slide deck and a measured delivery devoid of sensationalism, Tom imparted pearls of wisdom drawn from a lifetime of studying these amazing ecosystems, and concluded with a balanced prognosis of what the future may hold. The RGS regularly attracts speakers of the highest quality, yet all talks are eminently approachable to the lay person interested in our natural world. The RGS East’s exciting spring programme is online here: Upcoming events - RGS The next talk to be held at school is during the holidays on Thursday 10 April at 19:30 in the Blake Studio. The lecture is entitled: Reimaging our urban spaces as future green spaces. Our urban commons are a precious resource with enormous significance for promoting biodiversity, health and wellbeing in an urban context. This talk will explore the different legal and cultural concepts of an urban common, illustrated with examples from research that includes Mousehold Heath in Norwich. Our speak is Chris Rogers whose career has encompassed being a Solicitor, Professor of law at the University of Wales Aberystwyth and he is now Emeritus Professor of Law at Newcastle University. The link to book tickets is here: Reimaging our urban spaces as future green spaces - RGS All are welcome.