Petition launched to stop closure of Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon

A petition has been launched calling on the University of Birmingham to reverse plans to relocate the Shakespeare Institute from Stratford-upon-Avon to its main campus in Edgbaston.

The campaign is supported by actors Sam West and Dame Janet Suzman and calls on the university to retain the Institute at Mason Croft, its Grade II* listed home in Stratford, where it has been based since 1951.

The university has told staff that, from September 2027, the Institute will leave Mason Croft and transfer its operations to unspecified rooms on the Birmingham campus. The future of the building, its historic garden and playing fields has not yet been confirmed.

The petition, which has reached 2,900 signatories at the time of publishing, argues that the Institute’s location is central to its work, given its proximity to Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Holy Trinity Church, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. It also highlights the Institute’s specialist research library, which houses 60,000 volumes of Shakespearean criticism and was established through donations specifically to support research in Stratford.

Professor Michael Dobson, Director of the Shakespeare Institute, has issued a statement expressing concern about the decision and its implications for staff, students and the library.

In a statement shared with the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald, he said: “I am very sorry to have to inform you that yesterday the assembled faculty of the Shakespeare Institute were told by university management that as of September 2027 we are to leave the building the Institute has occupied in the centre of Stratford since 1951, and transfer its operations to unspecified rooms on the main Birmingham University campus in Edgbaston. We are told that the university does not yet know what it will then do with this listed building, Mason Croft, nor with its historic garden and playing fields.

“We were not party to this decision, and we were not allowed to inform it. I personally do not expect that the Institute’s long-established MA programmes in Shakespeare studies will long survive the move (students tend to come to the Institute because they wish to be in Shakespeare’s home town and close to the RSC, not because they have strong feelings about Birmingham), and without Shakespeare students to teach I fear my colleagues will soon be at risk of redundancy.

“I will myself be resigning rather than aiding and abetting this move, and my deputy Professor Tiffany Stern has accepted a new position at Yale.

“There is of course much to be said about the implications of this move for the economy and cultural ecosystem of Stratford, for the reputation of the university, for the status of Shakespeare studies and the wider humanities nationally and internationally, and so on. I have too many distressed students and colleagues to deal with at present to write at length on these topics, but I will mention our library. Some of you helped raise funds for the library building 30 years ago; some of you have deposited priceless annotated scripts and other archive materials there, for the benefit of our students and of other interested researchers in Stratford.

“It is not clear that those in charge of the university even remembered the library’s existence while making this decision. The central university library in Birmingham certainly does not have space for the Institute’s hand-picked 60,000 volumes (the largest single collection of Shakespearean criticism in this country), and because of its policy of favouring digital holdings over physical there is some risk that its managers may prefer to discard or even destroy much of the collection instead of moving it.”

In a statement given to Times Higher Education, the University argued “moving to the University’s Edgbaston campus provides an opportunity for the Shakespeare Institute to thrive in a new setting, facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration with a critical mass of arts and creative specialists – literature, theatre, film, television, music, digital media, history, and performance – and connecting the Institute to the city’s dynamic creative industries.”

The petition calls on Vice-Chancellor Adam Tickell and the University of Birmingham Council to halt the plans to close Mason Croft and relocate the Institute outside Stratford-upon-Avon. It also asks the university to publish the rationale, financial figures and Equality Impact Assessments behind the proposal, and to enter into discussions with Institute staff, students, alumni and Stratford’s cultural institutions about securing its future at Mason Croft.

The campaign argues that relocating the Institute would affect the town’s cultural and academic standing, as well as the future of its postgraduate Shakespeare studies programmes – located incredibly close to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Stratford-upon-Avon base.