A New Home for Working Classicists!
We’ve got a new website. You might have noticed.
We loved our old site. We built it in about two weeks flat, cramming as many resources and cool tidbits as we could into its cluttered pages, creating a rudimentary space for Working Classicists to find itself and become what it is today. We posted more than a hundred incredible articles from our gifted writers, we hosted huge lists of beginner resources and reading lists, we even held our own awards ceremony on there.
Initially we intended to port our existing site from Wix over to another web platform, as part of our commitment to boycotting Israeli products. But as the reach of our mission expanded, and as we too grew into our roles, we realised we needed to say goodbye to the old site for good. It’s sort of sad, but also sort of amazing that we’ve come this far. And that you guys keep encouraging us.
The practicalities of the last few months don’t lend themselves to engaging prose but just know that George has worked tirelessly to make this smashing new site completely from scratch and almost entirely by himself. With, of course, special mention to our friends and supporters who were able to do bug fixes, answer questions, and solve lingering issues – we couldn’t have done it without you.
All-in-all the project has taken George about three months of late nights, a heap of alternating frustrations and joys, and reams of scribbled notes. The result is the website you are now on. We really hope you like it.
We didn’t want to lose the personality of Working Classicists which had been clear in the old site. Anyone who has used a contemporary website will be able to see that they are increasingly homogenous and dull. Essentially, they are glossy information dumps with a contact form and a shop attached. We did not want this to be our fate.
The guiding principles of the redesign have been Accessibility and Usefulness. Everything in the site should be accessible, and at all points its content should be useful. So, what we have here is a new engine to run a sleeker website, and a lot more content for users.
Please do bear with us while we do the more tedious tasks of moving the metadata of old blog posts, and other small fixes. We’re on it. And if you have any suggestions, we’d love to hear them (if only to test if our Contact page works properly).
In the very near future we have some HUGE new features coming too, which you deserve to hear about if you’ve read this far, so we’ll tell you about one of them: we’re going to have whole free courses in Classical Studies right here on the website – video lectures, study guides, the LOT. We’ll also be releasing a National 5 textbook shortly. It’s tricky to get schools up and running with these courses without a guiding document of this kind, and while what we have produced may not be perfect, it’s enough to guide teachers and pupils through these courses, and will be free to download forever.
While you’re here, please do have a look around. We’ve updated practically everything and tried to cover almost every base.
There is now a section for Young Classicists, aimed at children, and their parents, who are looking to develop an early interest in ancient things. From books and toys to days out and online (educational) games, we’ve got it all. There are also handy red buttons to help scroll between the different sections (a feature on several of the pages). This is a section we’d like to expand, so if you know of a good Classical day out, please send us the details and we’ll add it to our list.
Along the same lines we’ve put together a section to help adults with a passing interest to grow their enthusiasm. Again, packed with recommendations for books, films, TV shows, video games, and YouTube channels… If you’re ever at a loose end and want to be pointed towards classical-themed entertainment, we’ve got you.
For those who are studying classical subjects, either independently, at school, or having studied at school in the past, there’s a section intended to help guide your learning. For those looking at university, we have a list of bursary pages for every UK university that runs a Classics course.
With Greek and Latin becoming so rare in state schools, the site now boasts an array of recommended texts and media channels for anyone looking at either learning in their own time, or else trying to develop the ancient languages they learned at school.
To help with ancient studies, we again collated a huge number of links to online research tools for students and academics. Having all of these in one place, accessible on mobile, is incredibly handy when trying to carry out research. In order to reduce loading times and to not eat into data packages, this page is almost entirely free of images, meaning it should run quickly and cheaply.
On top of that, we have assembled a virtual library of ancient texts in English, Latin and Greek from the Gutenberg project, and turned them into PDFs which you can download instantly – no logins or passwords required. These might not be the most up-to-date translations or editions, but they are free, and will hopefully provide access to anyone who is struggling financially.
Next, we’ve assembled a list of organisations in Classics who offer help and advice regarding specific areas of their studies. We know that it is harder for neurodiverse students, or those with physical disabilities, or those from the LGBTQ+ community, to get on in Classics, so we hope that having these organisations pulled together on one page will help those who need support.
Perhaps the biggest effort went into porting our Zine, and in truth this is still not yet entirely complete. Nonetheless, every article has been carried over. We will again begin publishing every week or so in November, and will continue to a) pay our writers, and b) provide a platform for voices across the discipline. Get in touch!
This has been a labour of love, but also a substantial drain on our energy (not to mention the finances of Working Classicists – donate here!).
However, what is in place now will hopefully be a practical and easy-to-use resource for as many people as possible.
Besides, we had to spruce things up ahead of the other thing which is coming soon…
Thanks for visiting us in our new home.
– George & Miri
