‌The Redress of the Past: Historical pageants in Britain, 1905-16

‌The Redress of the Past: Historical pageants in Britain, 1905-16

 Abstract

Subject to regular bouts of 'pageant fever', from 1905 onwards communities across England, Scotland and Wales staged theatrical re-enactments of events from local and national history that involved large sections of the population as performers, organizers and spectators. Over the course of the twentieth century many thousands of events were mounted by communities and institutions, ranging from small churches and village communities to large cities such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. Though less popular now, the pageant phenomenon has persisted. Most recently it has been revisited within large-scale shows such as that presented annually at Bishop Auckland, beginning in the summer of 1016, see: https://www.kynren.com/

Our research into pageants has provided a vista onto the ways people across the UK have understood and engaged with the past, and afforded new insights into the role played by popular historical narratives in the formation of local and national identities. Funded by the AHRC, researchers based in several UK universities have explored this movement, including at the University of Glasgow where in-depth study of Scottish historical pageants has been undertaken for the first time.

Funding for the first phase of the Redress of the Past project ended in April 2017 and has resulted in several publications, as well as the construction of our fully, publicly accessible website to which we continue to add information about pageants large and small.  See: http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/

The project is also delighted to announce that it has recently been awarded follow-on funding by the AHRC. This will allow engagement and impact work is to promote knowledge and understanding of historical pageants among new user groups and the broader national public, while also deepening our engagement with the local heritage sector and local history communities. We seek to do this through methods not used in the original project, including dramatic performance, film and systematic training for local/amateur historians. Several partner organisations within the heritage sector will be involved with the staging of exhibitions on local pageants and the wider movement in locations across England. In addition three ‘roadshow’ events are planned, including one in early Summer 2020 in Glasgow, in tandem with Glasgow Women’s Library. There will be further dissemination of the project findings at these interactive occasions. Future published outputs resulting from follow-on work will include a short Guide to pageant research aimed at local history communities and an open-access article on the public engagement activities of the project. A further potential outcome will be a television programme on the history of pageants using insights gathered from the Redress project as well as the team’s expert knowledge on surviving historical resources in terms of documents and film footage.

Principle Investigator:

Professor Paul Readman, Kings College London

Co-Investigator/s:         

Dr Mark Freeman, UCL Institute of Education;

Dr Angela Bartie, University of Edinburgh

Research Associates:  

Dr Linda Fleming, University of Glasgow,

Dr Tom Hulme, Queen’s University Belfast,

Dr Alex Hutton, Kings College London

Funder:                          

AHRC

Project Dates:                  

November 2013 - April 2017 & September 2019- September 2020.

Publications:

Books:

Bartie, L. Fleming, M. Freeman, A. Hutton and P. Readman (eds), Restaging the Past: Historical Pageants, Culture and Sociery in Modern Britain (London: UCL Press, forthcoming; Gold Open Access). 

Bartie, L. Fleming, M. Freeman, T. Hulme, A. Hutton, and P. Readman, "History Taught in the Pageant way": Education and Historical Performance in Twentieth-century Britain', History of Education, 48 (2019), 156-79

Journal Articles

Bartie, L. Fleming, M. Freeman, T. Hulme, A. Hutton, and P. Readman, 'Historical Pageants and the Medieval Past in Twentieth-Century England', English Historical Review, 133 (2018), 866-902.

Bartie, L. Fleming, M. Freeman, T. Hulme, P. Readman, and C. Tupman, '"And Those Who Live, How Shall I Tell Their Fame?" Historical Pageants, Collective Remembrance and the First World War, 1919-1939’, Historical Research, 90 (2017), 636-61. Available for free download.

Hulme, T., '"A Nation of Town Criers": Civic Publicity and Historical Pageantry in Inter-war Britain', Urban History, 44 (2017), 270-91. Available for free download online.

Bartie, L. Fleming, M. Freeman, T. Hulme, P. Readman, and C.Tupman, 'The Redress of the Past: Historical Pageants in Twentieth-Century England', International Journal of Research on History Didactics, History Education and History Culture - Yearbook/Jahrbuch/Annales 37 (2016), 19-35.

Bartie, L. Fleming, M. Freeman, T. Hulme, and P. Readman, “Commemoration through Dramatic Performance: Historical Pageants and the Age of Anniversaries, 1905-1920”, in T.G. Otte (ed.), The Age of Anniversaries: The Cult of Commemoration, 1895-1925 (London: Routledge, 2018), 195-218

Hulme, T., ‘Historical Pageants, Neo-Romanticism and the City in 1930s Britain’, Informationen zur Modernen Stadtgeschichte, issue 2 (2016)

Chapters in Edited Collections:

Bartie, L. Fleming, M. Freeman, T. Hulme, and P. Readman, "Performing the Past: Identity, Civic Culture and Historical Pageants in Twentieth-Century small towns" in L. Klusakova, Small Towns in Europe and Beyond: 20th-21st Century (Prague: Karolinum Press, 2017), 24-51

Bartie, L. Fleming, M. Freeman, A. Hutton, and P. Readman, ‘Performing the Past: Historical Pageants in Scotland’, History Scotland, 16:5 (September/October 2016), 22-24.

Other Publications:

Bartie, L. Fleming, M. Freeman, A. Hutton, and P. Readman, ‘Performing the Past: Historical Pageants in Scotland’, History Scotland, 16:5 (September/October 2016), 22-24.