Asst. Prof. Sjoerd Levelt of the Program in Civilizations, Cultures and Ideas (CCI) at Bilkent is participating as a project researcher in an innovative project led by the University of Bristol in England. Aimed at children with learning disabilities, the project has recently been awarded funding by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The grant of £163,100 will support a collaboration with professionals from Aardman, the Oscar-winning studio behind “Wallace & Gromit” and “Shaun the Sheep,” and the creative education organization Flash of Splendour.
Drawing on research by Dr. Levelt and scholars at the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge, the project will run workshops for young students with special educational needs, producing stop-motion animations based on medieval stories of Reynard the Fox. It will culminate in an international exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford.
Dr. Levelt describes the collaboration as “truly groundbreaking.” Commenting on the potential impact of the project, he noted that the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund “will not only allow our research to reach new and diverse audiences and relevance, but it will also transform our work: seeing the ways children and young people with disabilities find to engage with the historical sources on which our research is based helps us gain new and unexpected perspectives on texts that we think we know well.”