Major Derby festival explores Dracula's link with city and Egyptian fake artefacts

An event providing a chance to find out more about Dracula - including links with Derby 100 years ago - will take place on Saturday (November 16). It forms part of a series of free public events called Being Human Festival of the Humanities in which the University of Derby is one of five universities in the UK taking part.

It is run by the University of London and supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. Taking place at Derby Museum and Art Gallery, in The Wardwick, from 10.30am to 2.30pm, Fangs and Folklore will explore where Bram Stoker's stories came from and how much he invented.

Taking part will be novelists and also Professor Matthew Cheeseman, from the University of Derby, who has been researching the origins of Dracula, including appearing on the stage for the very first time at the Grand Theatre in Derby in 1924.

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Also happening as part of the Being Human Festival this weekend - at the Museum of Making - will be a look at what makes an artefact real and valuable. Is Making it Really Faking It will give visitors a chance to look at replicas of ancient Egyptian relics sold to tourists in the 19th century and there is also a chance to produce your own artefacts with Derbyshire potter Mary Johnson. The sessions run for 90 minutes starting at 10am, 12.30pm and 3pm. For more information and to book click here.

A Derby 2024 Festival Hub spokesman said: "Derby’s programme builds on the legacies and work of our 2020 Festival Hub, including our key partnership with Derby Museums, this time exploring Derby as a centre of engineering in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

"Taking the centenary of the city’s display of its trade, history and culture at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1924 as a starting point, events will explore the making of modern Derby through inclusive performances, pottery, and participatory art."