The Age of Revolution project, led by Dr Ben Marsh from the Centre for American Studies and the School of History, has secured £41,500 of funding support from the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. This is on top of the £130,000 already awarded for the project, which will run through to March 2021.
The project has adapted to help support schools, teachers, and students to engage with diverse themes and voices from the period 1775-1848, in spite of COVID disruptions.
These have included eight new animated films on Medicine in the Age of Revolution released in June 2020, with interviews conducted by Kent students of academics and curators, including Professor Charlotte Sleigh and Dr Claire Jones. They focus on objects and ‘breakthroughs’ (such as vaccination!), and are accompanied by bespoke schemes of work and enquiry questions to support students studying GCSE Medicine through Time – even if locked down at home.
Colleagues at Kent and far beyond have contributing to the growing bank of podcasts recorded by student ambassadors, including Dr Ambrogio Caiani on the Guillotine, Dr Mark Lawrence on 1848 Revolutions, and Dr Rebekah Higgitt on HMS Endeavour, which are being used in classrooms and recommended by the Historical Association.
This new continuation funding from DCMS will allow the project to run to March 2021, and print and distribute thousands more copies of our popular Peterloo graphic novel (on historical interpretation) and Top Trumps packs (on diverse figures), bringing the period and its agents, ideas, and upheavals into schools throughout the UK.
New pop-up exhibitions on recruitment and military history (with regimental museums) and an A-level pack supporting the study of revolutionary developments in Ireland between 1775-1800, led by Dr Tim Bowman will follow in the months to come.