The focus of this symposium was to explore the old and new, of familiar materials such as paper, cloth and vellum; and new media such as photography and the digital. The symposium comprised of an intensive week of masterclasses and evening lectures exploring the changing nature of the text from the monastery to the digital age.

The evening talks featured presenters ranging from Prof. David Levy, University of Washington, USA, author of ‘Scrolling forward: making sense of documents in the digital age’ (2001) to local calligrapher Susan Moor, who has been specially commissioned to make a full size reproduction on vellum of an opening from the Codex Amiatinus; one of the great books associated with Monkwearmouth.