Webinars and Virtual Tours Fills the Void While Normal Trust Events are Suspended

By Robin H Prater

Despite the impact of the coronavirus on the Trust’s activities, we’re telling the story of Edwin Lutyens in the UK and the US via virtual tours and webinars, and, we’re glad to report, people are listening. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, The Lutyens Trust and The Lutyens Trust America have been working together to find at least a partial substitute for the members’ events programme, which is in forced suspension. To this end, the two Trusts began co-hosting a series of webinars on Lutyens and his work. Initially created for our members, we are delighted that listeners have tuned into the webinars not only in the UK and the US, but also in Australia, Canada, Chile, India, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, South Africa and Spain.

With over 800 projects to his credit in a multitude of disciplines and on numerous scales, Lutyens offers ample opportunities for webinar topics. Our choices so far have ranged from in-depth looks at specific architectural projects to overviews of his architecture, garden design and furniture. We are also highlighting several of his designs outside the UK. All webinars (excluding the Q&A section) are posted online on The Lutyens Trust website, https://www.lutyenstrust.org.uk/about-lutyens/webinars/, and on The Lutyens Trust America website, https://lutyenstrustamerica.com/about/webinars/. The webinars can also be viewed in the same format on LTAmerica’s YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Vq0ujQsr9jRF9fv9pRW8A, soon after each episode.

Martin Lutyens and Robin Prater have been the moderators for the webinars with Martin’s son, Marcos Lutyens, on board as host and coordinator. A special thankyou goes to Marcos for organising the webinars. The topics and panellists for the webinars offered so far are listed below:

• “Arts and Crafts Beginnings: The Story of Goddards” (Panel: Michael Imber, Tom Kligerman)
• “The Life and Legacy of Sir Edwin Lutyens” (Panel: Robin Prater, Jane Ridley)
• “3D-Modelling of Lutyens’s Proposed Liverpool Cathedral: The Greatest Building Never Built” (Panel: Nicholas Webb, Jeff Speakman)
• “Lutyens and Jekyll: Architecture and the Garden Landscape” (Panel: Virginia Burt, Sarah Dickinson, Janice Parker, Judith Tankard)
• “Lutyens and the British School at Rome” (Panel: Stephen J Milner, Hugh Petter)
• “The Furniture and Lighting Designs of Sir Edwin Lutyens” (Panel: Candia Lutyens, Alan Powers)
• “City Beautiful on the Rand: Lutyens in South Africa” (Panel: Ankie Barnes, Mervyn Miller)
• “Lutyens: Speaking to the 21st Century – The Relevance of Lutyens to Contemporary Design“ (Panel: Peter Inskip, Kulapat Yantrasast)

We keep and constantly update a list of ideas for future webinars, so if you have suggestions, please share them with us at LutyensTrustAmerica@gmail.com. Thank you for watching and supporting this project.

In parallel with the webinars, The Lutyens Trust has been posting a series of virtual tours online in the form of illustrated articles from past newsletters. Each tour revisits Lutyens Trust trips over the past few years, including Castle Drogo, Surrey, the Cotswolds, Lambay Castle and Sullingstead. The commentary is written by experts and offers special insight into each site visited. These tours have been shared with members of both The Lutyens Trust and The Lutyens Trust America.