The Redress of the Past: Historical Pageants in Britain

The proposed programme of follow-on work enhances the impact of the earlier AHRC-funded research project, 'The Redress of the Past: Historical Pageants in Britain 1905-2016' (RoP). This project drew on documentary, visual and oral history sources to provide an authoritative treatment of a subject that had largely escaped academic scrutiny. Historical pageants were one of the most important and ubiquitous channels of popular engagement with the past in twentieth-century Britain: communities of all sizes came together to stage theatrical re-enactments of local and national history, often involving thousands of performers and tens of thousands of spectators. The original RoP project considered the social organisation, dramatic content and wider cultural significance of historical pageants, using locally held sources across the country to examine how communities and institutions told their own histories. The central output was a free-to-use, fully searchable online database that now contains details of more than 650 pageants (www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/). In collaboration with project partners in Bury St Edmunds, Carlisle, St Albans and Scarborough, the RoP team also produced a series of successful exhibitions, workshops and other events, stimulating public engagement with the research.

Involving one existing and four new project partners, as well as other collaborating organisations, the follow-on activity will extend and deepen the non-academic impact of the research. It will do this by deploying techniques of public engagement that were not exploited in the original RoP project, including dramatic and musical re-performance and the use of film. It will also result in the first national-level exhibition on historical pageantry. The key elements of the follow-on project are:

1. A 30-minute documentary film, produced in partnership with the Windrose Rural Media Trust, telling the history of pageantry across Britain and including re-performed pageant scenes and music, as well as existing footage;
2. A programme of activities at Eversley, Hampshire, and St Albans, Hertfordshire, co-organised with project partners and engaging both adults and children in re-performances and other activities connected with pageantry, alongside new exhibitions focusing on those localities;
3. A local history fair at Cecil Sharp House, London, organised in partnership with the English Folk Dance and Song Society. This will bring together local historians and heritage sector organisations, many of whom have an active interest in undertaking research into, and staging exhibitions about, historical pageantry. It will also include an element of re-performance, and will take place alongside an exhibition in the same location, focusing on the links between historical pageantry and the folk arts;
4. The production of a 30-page Guide to the study of pageants, aimed at local history and heritage communities and available online and in hard copy;
5. A series of activities at Axbridge, Somerset, in partnership with Axbridge Pageant Association, during its preparations for the 2020 Axbridge Pageant;
6. A 'roadshow' of events in three locations - Glasgow, York and Dorset - at which members of the project team will share the results of their research, including the film and Guide, with project partners and other collaborators, and help to build further capacity for local history research into the pageant tradition.

Through these activities, the follow-on project will extend the reach of the RoP project, while also promoting independent and collaborative research at a local level into an important and stimulating aspect of modern British community history.

This follow-on project will promote knowledge and understanding of historical pageants among new user groups and the broader national public, while also deepening engagement with the heritage sector and local history communities. It will do this by means of media and methods not used in the original project, including performance, film, training for independent/local historians and a national-level exhibition. We will use innovative techniques of public engagement, including dramatic and musical re-performance, and also film, to extend awareness of the history of the pageants. We will work with theatre groups and with those directly connected with the ongoing pageant tradition, as well as following up previously unanticipated opportunities to stage exhibitions in connection with this work.

To achieve our project objectives we will work with one existing and four new project partners. In Eversley, Hampshire, a partnership with the Charles Kingsley Society will result in a public lecture and study day, using objects and documents in the possession of the project team, and a re-performance of the 1919 Eversley pageant by pupils from Charles Kingsley's School. In St Albans, Hertfordshire, we will extend our existing partnership with St Albans Museums in new directions, working with local theatre groups to re-stage scenes from the 1907, 1948 and 1953 St Albans pageants; we will also co-curate a large exhibition in the new St Albans city museum (opened 2018), which offers a previously unanticipated opportunity to present the history of local pageants to a large audience. In Axbridge, Somerset, we will partner with the Axbridge Pageant Association (APA) to deliver a programme of activities linked to the upcoming 2020 Axbridge historical pageant.

We will also work with a new, national-level project partner, the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), based at Cecil Sharp House (CSH) in London. An exhibition will be staged at CSH, focusing on the folk arts elements of pageantry: our database at www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants contains much detail about these aspects of the phenomenon, hitherto not fully exploited. Working with EFDSS, we will host a local history fair aimed at local history communities and the heritage sector. This will offer an opportunity for local historians to share their own research into pageant history, and will build further capacity through object-handling and research training sessions.

Finally, we will work with another project partner, the Windrose Rural Media Trust (WRMT), to produce a 30-minute documentary film about the history of the pageant movement. This will use oral history collected during the original project, archive film of pageants, and newly filmed re-performances of pageant scenes and music, and it will form the basis of a pitch to the BBC for a television documentary or series about historical pageants. It will be made freely available via the project website.

Across all our partnerships, a key impact of the follow-on work will be the stimulation and support of independent research into historical pageants. Feedback collected from the original project shows a considerable appetite in the heritage sector and among local history communities for this work, and we will offer practical support for local historians and heritage organisations who want to undertake it and/or engagement activities of their own (e.g. exhibitions). This support will include a printed and online Guide to studying pageants, and a 'roadshow' of activities in the form of events in strategically located parts of the country: Dorset and Somerset (involving the APA and WRMT), York (working with the Scarborough Archaeological and Historical Society) and Glasgow (in collaboration with Glasgow Women's Library).