A writer and a translator are needed for a poignant arts project at a holocaust museum in Huddersfield.

Holocaust Centre North is based at the University of Huddersfield and a project called Memorial Gestures was set up in 2022 to give leading and emerging artists the opportunity to create new artwork inspired by its archives and in response to its themes and collections around Holocaust remembrance and history.

Earlier this year, for the very first time, the centre appointed a translator and a writer in residence to join four artists as part of this unique project. They too were invited to respond to and translate the centre’s memories, artefacts and accounts which cover themes of discrimination, displacement, trauma, migration, loss, memory and hope through creative and artistic practices.

The centre is now seeking to appoint a new translator and writer in residence for its 24/25 programme – these are paid positions and open to established and emerging writers and translators based in the UK.

For the position, Holocaust Centre North is keen to hear from those working with languages spoken by minority communities with a presence in the north of England who have experiences of migration, building a new life in England and preserving difficult histories.

It is particularly interested in working with translators with experience working in languages such as Arabic, Gujarati, Romanian, Panjabi, Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian, Urdu as well as languages which are particularly relevant to Holocaust history and the centre’s collections such as Czech, French, German, Hebrew and Hungarian.

The writer-in-residence will be supported to produce a new literary work engaging with material and themes in the museum while the translator will be encouraged to produce work reflecting on the experience of living across multiple languages in the context of traumatic histories.

Both the newly appointed writer and translator-in-residence will be part of a group learning programme alongside visual artists and will be given the opportunity to spend time in Holocaust Centre North’s Archive, exploring it growing collection of documentary evidence of the Holocaust and lives of survivors who rebuild their lives in the north of England.

Andrew Key, Head of Creative Development at Holocaust Centre North, said: “Already our current and first writer and translator-in-residence have started finding new ways to tell the lesser known stories of Holocaust history which have lain buried in our archive.

“We want to provide a space for writers to find new ways into this difficult past by exploring new forms or techniques and by being supported to take steps into an area of research which may appear daunting.

“Our hope is that the translator-in-residence will have an opportunity to work closely with other communities in the region to find new ways of telling the shared stories of migration in the north, to help foster a celebration of the north’s diversity and history of multiculturalism.

“Through the programme we hope to invite people who may have felt excluded from Holocaust history into our archive so that we can build a deeper understanding of the ongoing impact of our shared history across the communities in our region today.”

Holocaust Centre North – based at the University of Huddersfield – not only tells the global story of the Holocaust but does so through over 120 local stories and materials from survivors who subsequently created new lives in the north of England.

To apply people should submit an expression of interest (no more than two sides of A4), a writing sample (of up to 1,500 words), a CV and details of a reference to memorial.gestures@hud.ac.uk.

More details about the residency can be found on the Holocaust Centre North website at hcn.org.uk

Written by ANDY HIRST who runs his own Yorkshire freelance journalism agency AH! PR (https://ah-pr.com/) specialising in press releases, blogging, website content and copywriting. 

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