INSCAPE IS AN ART AND ARCHITECTURE HISTORY SOCIETY FOR THE INQUISITIVE

Within a span of twenty-five years, INSCAPE, a most unusual study and travel organisation, has carved a unique place in the field of British cultural activity. Founder-Director Nicholas Friend, an Oxbridge maverick and polymath, eloquently leads the way with a curious combination of erudition, irreverence, and pure pedagogic pleasure. His lectures, in particular, spring from a fervent and life long passion for the creative process at work in the in the visual arts, architecture, music and literature.

Using a blend of new and old age technology Nicholas weaves fact, figure, and historical evidence with innovative ideas and observations. His multi-media presentations use slides, film cuts, music, and recordings, peppered with readings and dramatisations of letters, diaries, short stories, novels and plays. He or a member of his talented team of specialist scholars and authors engage participants in a sweeping range of topics in the arts and letters. Eschewing artificial boundaries between disciplines, INSCAPE lecturers place fine art and architecture, music and literature in the context of politics and economics, religious and secular belief, science and mathematics. The lectures are anything but dull, and most border on inspirational.

INSCAPE takes place all over the world. Its lecture rooms are the parquet and marble hallways of fine country houses, the worn steps of temples and palaces, the angular conjunctions of pavement and structure in ancient villages and modern cities, the inner circles and sanctums of Neolithic standing stones and cavernous naves and crypts, the luminous corridors of galleries and museums, and last but not least, the INSCAPE lecture room in Whitehall. In the cultural heart of London’s West End, with the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and St Martin in the Fields as immediate neighbours, it is easily reached by Charing Cross Rail Station and Underground; a bus stop is on its doorstep.

INSCAPE members are good people and good company; they love humour, ideas, books, and learning. They love to talk; they love to listen, they love to think. For them, INSCAPE is the education they missed the first time around! INSCAPE transcends the everyday, making their world a better place to be in, one lecture at a time.