In what ways can we conceive of medievalism as a practice-based discipline, bringing creative, performative, and collaborative methodologies to bear in formulating new understandings of the past? In Medieval Studies – and Humanities scholarship more widely – where might we site the boundary between conventional critical approaches and more imaginative, subjective, and affective forms of inquiry? And what is at stake if we enlarge our definitions of scholarship to encompass more diverse methods and media? Questions about the place of imagination and creativity in scholarship are currently emerging as a major debate in the Humanities, driven in part by the growing emphasis on engaged or participatory research and partnerships beyond academia, perhaps most visible in the context of research discourses and frameworks in the United Kingdom, but also increasingly in Europe, North America, and other international settings. Beyond this, a number of leading medievalists have themselves, in recent years, posed propositions and provocations that seek to challenge our assumptions about the limits of scholarship and authority, and the kinds of discourses and registers through which we can practice and communicate research. And a growing number of medievalists are seeking opportunities to work in creative idioms that extend beyond traditional academic forms and contexts.

This essay engages with these broad-reaching questions and their implications by taking as its starting-point the artwork Hryre at St. John's ruins, Chester (2012), which I created in collaboration with the artist Nayan Kulkarni, drawing on new research into the literature and culture of medieval Chester. This dynamic, light-based installation presents a constantly changing collage of fragments from manuscripts in English, Latin, and Welsh, reflecting the multi-lingual culture of medieval Chester, and seeks to provide a point of imaginative engagement with the past at the site of the medieval monastic ruins of St. John's. As an experiment in practice-led medievalism and creative collaboration, the Hryre project opened up new directions for research and shaped new ways of thinking about the city's medieval heritage. It also brought into focus questions about the relationships between scholarship and creative practice, which I interrogate here by exploring Hryre alongside other imaginative presentations of the medieval past in Chester since 1800. Questions about the place of imagination and creativity in scholarship are far from new, as this long-view analysis suggests, and the Chester sources, of course, speak to the concerns and cultural contexts of their own particular historical moments.