The ‘Study Sesh’ workshops are an exciting new offering from the Citizens Project which allow students to take on the role of the historian and untangle clues to find out why a particular event happened in our past. The workshop takes place in two stages and culminates in a visit to Royal Holloway, University of London, where the students film their very own short video sharing their discovery with the world.
So far we have trialled the workshops with two schools: Cambourne Village College in Cambridge and Kingsley Academy in Hounslow. Natty, Madi, Iria and Freya from Cambourne Village College talk more about the experience below.
“On Tuesday 26th September we met Claire for the first time. She was really friendly and enthusiastic to not only teach us but find out what we enjoyed about history. She started the lesson with a small introduction about history in general and explained her job to us. We then started to focus on a more specific part of history; the suffrage movement. She told us that we would be historians for the day before handing us a pack of sources to do with the suffrage movement that we had to analyse. It was the type of work she would have to as part of her job as a historian. It was difficult but also engaging and gave us an insight into the prominent causes of women gaining the vote. At the end, she gave us a chance to ask her questions relating to universities and gave us some advice. We had a lot of queries and felt much more informed after she answered them, leaving us more excited for our visit to Royal Holloway University.
Then, on the 2nd of October, we drove to London to see Claire again and the university. When we got there she showed us the café and we had a break in which we were able to recharge and talk about the day ahead. Then we were taken to a meeting room in which we recapped what we’d learnt the previous week and were given our lines for the video. We started the tour of the university during which people were selected to begin the filming. We were taken to the library (where we saw the Emily Wilding Davison tapestry), to the outdoor roof study area, to the courtyard (with the statue of Queen Victoria), to the chapel and lastly to a lecture theatre in the engineering building, where we wrapped up the filming for the video. Claire and the filming team let us into the lecture theatre where we had our interviews and got to experience what university lecture was like.
Overall, both visits were amazing and insightful experiences that encouraged us to think about the history of not only the suffragettes, but history in general. It gave us an understanding of what universities are like and what we want to do in the future. We all agreed that this event was really informative and we would recommend it to other people. Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity!”
You can watch the video from Cambourne Village College here and Kingsley Academy here on our YouTube channel. If you are interested in getting your school involved with the Citizens Project please contact us at Citizens@rhul.ac.uk
By Natasha Browes, Maddison Jeffrey, Iria Rodreguez and Freya Griffiths with Dr Claire Kennan
