Beginning in 2024, the Moors for the Future Partnership, in conjunction with Bradford Council, Rebel Restoration and Friends of Ilkley Moor (FoIM), has undertaken restoration work on Ilkley Moor to restore peatland and improve flood and wildfire resilience. This work has involved the installation of hundreds of stone, timber, coir and heather dams to stem the flow of water from the moorland. The p…

Over a couple days last summer I made high-resolution scans of 30 reflective document mats attached to the A3 and A4 Epson scanner lids at Leeds Arts University. I believe this accounts for almost all of the scanners at LAU that had mats installed on their lids, across the Mac Suites and various studios throughout the building. On the few occasions a scanner was inoperable, I removed the mat and i…

There's a misconception among those with only a casual interest in Jewish heritage in Poland: that when a property is restored to a Jewish community through the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland, its preservation is thereby assured and it will be developed in a manner befitting its historical and cultural significance. Such views ignore the stark economic realities and tensions inher…

I learned today that my great-grandmother Else's elderly mother, Clara Hirschel (née Goldstein), was interned alongside her daughter and son-in-law at the transit camp I visited in Rybna (formerly Reibnig). Clara was a member of the prominent Goldstein family, several of whom moved from Kattowitz to Breslau in the mid-19th century. I'd previously found her husband's name on the Goldstein family to…

My paternal great-great-grandfather was Max Kornicker, born 11 May 1853 in Posen (now Poznań), in what was then the Kingdom of Prussia. He had several siblings, one of whom was Louis, born 12 September 1855. Louis married Jenny Moos in Berlin in 1888, moved to his new bride's hometown of Erfurt, Thuringia, and founded a factory in the city manufacturing woollen goods. He died in 1919 and it's pres…