Online festival for famous ornithologist
July 9, 2020
Gilbert White & The Oates Collections are celebrating the eminent naturalist’s 300th birthday with an online birthday festival.
Gilbert White’s House was due to celebrate a year-long programme of events celebrating the 300th anniversary of Gilbert White’s birth, with the climax being a large event on 18 July, the day Gilbert White was born.
However due to Covid-19 the event was cancelled so will be celebrated instead on the 18 July 2021 to mark Gilbert White’s 301st birthday. The museum based in Selborne, where Gilbert White lived and immortalised through his writing, has decided to mark the 300th birthday with an online celebration.
Festival organiser Kimberley James said: “We wanted to mark the day, in way that everyone could join in with and really celebrate the legacy Gilbert White has. This way people all around the world can join us at a time when the numbers allowed to visit Selborne are so limited.”
The festival will be hosted on the museum’s You Tube Channel, and will feature speakers such as Laurence Rose, naturalist, author and director of the RSPB’s Back from the Brink Project. Other speakers include Mike Pratt, CEO of the Northumberland Wildlife Trust and Stephanie West from the Natural History Museum on her research tracking Gilbert White through London.
The festival will also feature tours of the house and garden, messages from friends of the museum and lovers of Gilbert White and a look at the moths found in Selborne.
The festival will begin at 9am on 18 July and run into the evening with content going live throughout the day.
People will be able to follow the action online by following the hashtag #GW300Online.
The event is free, but people will be able to donate to the museum, which has been hit hard by the effects of Covid-19 and will asking for donations through the birthday event. The museum’s grounds will be open on 18 July but not the house, which is still awaiting a date for its reopening. Anyone visiting Selborne on the day, will have the opportunity to buy Gilbert White 300 souvenirs and taste beer made from Gilbert White’s brewhouse to mark the occasion.