Calista Lucy by Nick Black
will allow us to understand the Dulwich of the 21 st Century as much as we can that of the 19 th or before. Of course, schoolchildren largely live in the now, and she has also had a keen eye for College ephemera which captures the day-to-day life of a school: posters, booklets, ties and even a stick of Dulwich College rock — all have made their way into the collection. Across the years Calista has met thousands of visitors to the College; many have been Old Alleynians. Lots have come back to reminisce about happy times at Dulwich, but this has not always been the case, and she has spoken or corresponded with all in a manner that is both kind and understanding. In doing so sha has helped some to banish the odd ghost or two. It has all been part of holding the history of the College in trust and Calista has done it with consummate professionalism. I will personally be sorry to see Calista leave as she retires from the College, and I wish her and William a long and happy retirement and the best of luck in the restoration of their home in Somerset. ◎
One of the busiest aspects of Calista’s role has been as custodian of the College’s Shackleton collection. In terms of the College’s partnerships programme, the visits by primary school children to see the James Caird and be inspired by the Shackleton story has been its greatest success, with more than 1,000 children a year visiting the College. She has also been a key link between the College and the various academic societies who have been inspired by Dulwich history, not least the James Caird Society and the PG Wodehouse Society. On Open House days she has taken the public through the Barry Buildings to see the Masters’ Library and the Great Hall. Archives cannot only look back; they must confront the future too. And here too Dulwich has been fortunate in the service that Calista has performed. In her time as Keeper of the Archive the College has largely gone digital; in its photographs, “paperwork”, school rolls and calendars. There is an archival danger that the digital could be a new dark age, with everything lost at the flicking of a switch or swamped in a mountain of information which is too huge to mine. In confronting this she has been a steady presence on the bridge, preparing systems of storage and search which
Calista came to Dulwich in 2001. In her first five years she had a number of jobs which proved invaluable in terms of her longer Dulwich career as Keeper of the Archive; that included work in the development office, on the bursary appeal, and through the evolution of the College website. On becoming the Keeper of the Archive at Dulwich in 2006, Calista very much believed that the archives must be “seen to be believed”. Dulwich has collections which are extraordinarily rich in their diversity and depth, and in the last 20 years she has worked tirelessly to promote what we hold and make it as accessible to both the Dulwich Community as well as to the wider general public. This has never been easy, as the Archive sits within a working school building which inevitably makes visiting difficult. To overcome this she has supported the digitisation of the College’s holdings, working with the Dulwich Society on our maps of the Estate and the Court Rolls as well as supporting the internationally important digitisation of the Henslowe-Alleyn Papers. In 2018 the Archives launched a website on Old Alleynians in the Great War, a project complimented by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for its quality and scope, and central to the study of history for all boys in Year 9. The Archive talks and events promoted through the Development Office and Old Alleynian Association, which started during the lean years of lockdown, have proved to be some of their most popular online events. These have, where possible, been tied in with physical displays of what the Archive holds, and it seems somehow appropriate that the exhibition event in Calista’s final term here should begin with a talk on why objects matter. That has been at the core of her beliefs, and that by showing what we hold and explaining their significance to both the boys and the public, we educate and grow.
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