Citizens: 800 years in the making

The history of the struggle for rights and representation from Magna Carta to today

Published: 19th August 2020

Royal Holloway, University of London, has produced hundreds of videos exploring the history of the struggle for rights and representation from Magna Carta to the Suffragettes and beyond. These videos, which are being used by over 60 schools and colleges across the UK to support KS3-5 teaching, are available via the History Hub YouTube channel and the HA podcast timeline.

A new video is released every week and many videos have been produced in collaboration with partners like The National Archives, the Parliamentary Archives, the History of Parliament Trust and the People’s History Museum. While the topics covered align most closely to those covered in AQA’s Britain: Power and the people: c1170 to the present day and OCR’s Power: Monarchy and Democracy, c.1000-2014, they can also be used to support a range of other options. 

The project has also produced two free online courses to help teachers to further develop their subject knowledge, Beyond the Ballot (developed with Parliament) and Peterloo to the Pankhursts (made with the People’s History Museum), both available via FutureLearn, and revision podcasts, which can be found be searching for History Hub on all major podcast platforms.

Help the Citizens team – take the short survey

These resources have been developed as part of a Heritage Fund supported project called Citizens: 800 years in the making, which is due to end later this year, at which point Royal Holloway will review, based on teacher feedback and demand, whether to continue this work, branching out to explore other historical topics. The Citizens team therefore asks that if you have used their resources that you complete this short survey to help them make the case to continue their work to support schools.