iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 1h

My dad's writing was once criticised in print by the late Jeffrey and it remains one of the things I am proudest of him for.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 21h

This is our book! Written by Sean Mayes and me, it recounts the vital importance of Black practitioners in shaping British musical theatre, and we remain hugely proud of it.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Extremely happy to share that my work on ladies' orchestras in Britain from 1880-1930 is now under contract for a book with the wonderful @boydellandbrewer.bsky.social Get ready for a world of women making music together at a scale we've only started to imagine.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Solidarity in Billy Elliot is an incredible example of how musical theatre story telling can compress stories with incredible economy and imagination.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

For the long running followers of adventures with wooden spoons, the British Library soup is so hot it also flattens the not very round spoon. If you see me drinking from a paper soup cup, you didnt.

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Charles Fourier @charlesfourier.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Bill Bryson’s words seem appropriate to post right now

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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I want the Prime Minister to look into a TV camera and say the RNLI are heroes, that we do not change policy by street violence in this country, and that he expects any criminal action to face the full force of the law. That's it. That's all he has to do.

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Cats of Yore @catsofyore.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

A gem at the county fair art show. 🎨

Acrylic painting of an angry looking white cat staring at the viewer with one paw on a blue vase, about to push it off a mantle.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

How long can academic conferences keep having the "recognising the cost of travelling to X" rather than "recognising the impact of flying on the environment, we have created this online space"? (Never mind "recognising no one has any funding for this at this point")

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Petra Boynton @petraboynton.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

All I would ask is if you work or study in a uni, check in with colleagues who may need help. And continue to do so. A duty of care should apply to ourselves and each other. Help here www.papyrus-uk.org www.thecalmzone.net anti-bullyingalliance.org.uk/tools-inform... blackbritishacademics.co.uk

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

We are on our second train derailment in two days, several parts of the UK are on fire, fire services and hospitals stretched to breaking point. Yes, people need to know how serious having fires right now is, but on the same day as downgrading EV targets... we need leadership and vision.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Ok where is the worst place you could have been for that alarm to have gone off? We have 'surgeon with phone next door' as an option...

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Music History PhDs, sneak into this one from our friends at IHR!

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

I hear it's #internationalcatday so here are my pair enjoying a very brief truce that immediately after this turned into a chase

A large black and white cat sits on a green sofa. He looks cautious. A smaller black and white cat is on her back showing a fluffy tummy, with an expression of touch me and regret it.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

My brothers in Christ, it is 2026. We do not need place of publication.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

We have wild fires narrowly being held off from a nuclear power plant right now. And still, "pragmatic".

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Moment of silence for autistic historian researchers as the British Newspaper Archive has changed its interface.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

'There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible'

a still from paddington 2, hugh grant is in a procession as a nun, the nuns are carrying candles.

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Institute of Historical Research @ihr.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

How do you decide which digital tools will help structure your historical research data? How can you organise your notes, tables and/or spreadsheets to help with your analysis? Join @justincolson.bsky.social at his IHR short course Sources to Data to find out more! www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

history.ac.uk

Sources to Data: Excel and Alternatives for Historians

IHR Short Course (PAID)

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

This did actually happen to me when my science teacher showed me his record collection and told me he didn't need his "at work" Beatles albums and gave me five of them on LP.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

If you would think of yourself as an LGBTQ+ ally, go read the education advice that comes into force in August. The language around "living in stealth" is appalling, and is moral panic turned discrimination and humiliation which will cause untold pain to trans young people

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Of the many things I learned from Bridget, her absolute devotion to the idea that you can overcome almost anything as long as you don't mind who gets the credit will continue to inspire me ❤️❤️

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Euston tonight is a massive accident waiting to happen. We need emergency plans for heat, but heat plus train chaos is dangerous and the crowding in that station was the worst I have ever seen it.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Could we not end universities being hated by successive governments 'by default' just as an experiment?

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

This is a terrifying development in robbing trans people of dignity and support, and all LGBTQ people and allies should be horrified at how in less than a decade we've got to this state.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Not google photos dropping me an alert to say "guess who we've found [name of your dead father]" - genuinely howling with horrifying laughter here. AI generated alerts kids... not the one.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

I've made the academic book club scam but what is unsettling about it is just how much academics are expected to pay for small things (illustrations, photos)... Plenty of people must fall for it on that basis. The AI garbling of the book also weird.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Pick a Bond villain from the pictures you already have on your phone.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

If you do say have a take away soup and then you leave the wooden spoon in that very hot soup... you will end up with a totally flat spoon. Just you know, fyi. Wouldn't be something I'd end up doing.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

The kitchen/pantry sequence in #Rivals is spectacular. It owes a great deal to Michael Frayn's Noises Off, and I am basically certain the chorus are singing 'Beef Daube' as it reaches its climax. Incredible blocking work, chef's kiss all round.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

I'm not sure 'write the statement for thingy' was the best to do list item I've ever committed to paper. Absolutely no idea.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

sorting out my old files - found from 2015. "Readers should produce at least one high-quality peer-reviewed article (or equivalent) per annum." Profs must do that but one monograph a cycle. On income "Readers should apply for at least £20,000 per annum on avg". - Profs 40k

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Posted a thing on insta so will share it here, a little piece of writing on #Sondheim, friendship and loss.

She was a whirl of bright and extraordinary chaos. My god she loved Sondheim, with Jason Robert Brown’s musicals an extremely close second. She was an excellent pianist, far better than me, loud in the way musical theatre pianists can be. She told the most chaotic and elaborate lies about the most stupid things, you knew they were lies but it just didn’t matter.

The first time I went to New York I stayed with her, and she took me to a Jersey shopping mall to teach me about Mac makeup and how to curl my hair, all the things she thought I needed a remedial education in. She was younger than me, not by much, but enough to enjoy helping me in what felt like a teenage movie musical montage. She drove into Manhattan (it could have been for my benefit) and her car got impounded: I ended up bailing it out for her at the city pound (her dad paid me back the next morning).

I loved her. She was the least sensible person I could ever have come across. I’ll call her Jodie. For all the parts of Jodie, one of them was that she was dependent on alcohol and had been for most of her adult life.

She was full of trouble and sparkled like the light on water.

The very last time I saw her I was staying in a cheap hotel on East 51st, not far from Sondheim’s townhouse. I played it too cool to wander by the brownstone. I mean not that cool, since a) I knew where it was and b) I knew that the park Sondheim memorialised in Company was on the same street as my hotel. The park is a tiny oasis in the aggressive heat of the city. It’s really the absence of a building, a protected tiny square with a waterfall on one side, and some trees and plants, or as Sondheim painted it: ‘a little pocket park’. In Company it’s where Kathy takes Bobby to break up with him, to tell him she can’t continue living in the chaos of New York, she has to go back to something real upstate. It’s meant to symbolise everything that Bobby can’t be and Kathy is, in the city but not of it.

Jodie was in and of the city. If you could have zoomed into her DNA, woven into it would have been tiny decorative Empire State Building snow globes. For someone who I met maybe five, six times in my life, no more, she cut a shape in my heart. I think I fascinated her, with my Britishness. She called me Sar-Bear and there is no one before or since who I’d let get away with that. Maybe she loved me too.

The last time we met, we sat in the park and I had a coke, and she was thirsty so I offered her some, and she said she wasn’t drinking right now, she couldn’t have any. I was confused, it’s just coke, nothing added?

The gulf between the pain I knew it was possible to experience and the pain she had inside of her was suddenly out in front of us in this tiny glimmer of a place. She died a little while back, much loved by her family and her friends.
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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Fell into the history of Birmingham's CBSO, and the fascinating story of Thomas Appleby Matthews - hardly anything about him exists, yet he brought orchestral music to the city in theatres, cinemas and the concert hall. sarahwhitfield.com/2026/03/30/b...

sarahwhitfield.com

Birmingham Music Making: the beginnings of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Thomas Appleby Matthews (1884-1949) is a surprisingly unknown figure given his importance to music making in Birmingham. He was the first conductor of what became the City of Birmingham Symphony Or…

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 30/03/2026

Enjoyed the well this has ruined the Eastenders flash forward #scottmills takes

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Happy free money day to all who celebrate (and join @alcs.co.uk they are brilliant and make writer's lives better all round). Thank you for the work you've done collecting all this <3

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Tom Edney @tomedney.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

These original sketches are currently on display at the Royal College of Music Museum, as part of a cabinet I co-curated with @sarahinthepark.bsky.social

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Felicity Callard @felicitycallard.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

And just look at how Adam Tickell, economic geographer and vice-chancellor, has chosen to word his attack here: 'getting access to the student loan book', 'investing money in people who are not really capable of graduating'

“We are getting students without a single A-level or equivalent getting access to the student loan book,” Tickell said, adding: “We’re investing so much money in people who … are not really capable of graduating.”

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Many of the most committed students I have had the joy to teach, who have grabbed the opportunity to learn with both hands, did not have A-levels. Education is for everyone or it means nothing.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

It is days like today I miss old Twitter.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Bold choice for a for profit journal publisher to ask me what I think of peer review, and offer the solution that HEIs pay for reviewing time. Why yes I did tell them what I thought of that.

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Dr. Fade @fade.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Sometimes Mcsweeneys is very funny and sometimes Mcsweeneys is sharply, pointedly, painfully true.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Had the joy of students imagining what they want classical music performance to look like in 2026. That much hope is contagious.

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Sarah K Whitfield @sarahinthepark.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Saw the incredible RCM disco 🪩 concert last night, which had the first half as soul and protest music. Songs like What's Going On and War, as well as Mississippi Goddamn. Incredible music, and the audience was so moved.

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