Dickens 2012

Portsmouth’s contribution to the Dickens bicentenary will be diverse, engaging and exciting.

The Dickens Community Archive project will be at the heart of the Dickens 2012 programme in Portsmouth. The community projects will move into an ongoing exhibition at the City Museum. This will also incorporate major loans of Dickens’ manuscripts. The Online Community Archive will also go live. In addition to this, Libraries will be running a ‘One City, One Read’ and a Dickens ‘Big Read’, taking reading opportunities into the community venues.

The 200th birthday itself will be marked as follows: From 9.30am, Old Commercial Road, the street where Dickens was born, will be transformed into a Victorian street scene, complete with performers and market traders.

30 members of The Pickwick Bicycle Club will ride penny farthings from Cosham to the Birthplace.

A ceremony outside his birthplace begins at 10.30am with speeches from the Lord Mayor and Dickens’s great, great grandson Ian Dickens, and Portsmouth Dickens Fellowship.

Over 100 children from Charles Dickens Junior school will also be attending.

At 12pm a service of thanksgiving at St Mary’s Church, where Shelia Hancock and Simon Callow will both give readings. St John's RC Primary School choir will be singing songs from Oliver!

Back at Charles Dickens Birthplace, Brian Conley will be making a personal appearance at 1.30pm.

There will be a performance of The Ballad of Charles Dickens at Old Commercial Road, at 12pm and 2pm from Portsmouth University drama department.

Entry to the Birthplace Museum will be free on the 7th from 11:30am.

Simon Callow will also be performing at The New Theatre Royal, reading excerpts from his book ‘Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World.

David Copperfield also begins its run at The King Theatre.

Following a free Dickens Guided Walk on his birthday there will be a free walk every other Saturday from 18th Feb to 18th August. Walks start from Victory Gate and end at the City Museum.

In May 2012 Aspex Gallery will launch The Sea Rises, an artist’s commission in that springs from A Tale of Two Cities. Being considered a revolutionary novel, it was one of the few western novels not banned in China during the Cultural Revolution. Events over the summer include Portsmouth Festivities, who have proposed the theme of Great Expectations for their June 2012 festival. The University of Portsmouth’s Centre for Studies in Literature is organising an international academic conference, ‘The Other Dickens’ which will take place on 6-8 July 2012.

From 9th-14th August 2012, the city will welcome the International Dickens Fellowship for its Annual Conference, hosted by the University of Portsmouth. The theme will be "The Impact of Dickens", and will cover his national and international status, his effect on theatre and film, and his generation of social, philosophical and political change. Also that month is a theatre production of Barnaby Rudge by Dickens Fellowship member Eileen Norris.

Portsmouth BookFest will feature Dickens again in its programme in October/November 2012. November will also see both the Victorian Festival of Christmas at the Historic Dockyard, a traditionally Dickensian event.