This week our Year Eight History students who are involved in the "From Sappho to Suffrage" museum project continued their journey!
They started by presenting some of the wonderful display boards and leaflets they had prepared for their chosen suffragettes. There were some very thoughtful, sensitive and also entertaining ideas and layouts. A range of different suffragettes were chosen. A popular choice was Emily Davison, who famously tried to attach a suffragette's flag to the King's horse and died doing so. We talked about whether she intended to kill herself - her return ticket has suggested it may not have been her intention. Some also looked at people like Annie Kenney, who was a mill worker who campaigned for the right for women to vote.
We then went on to talk about what made a really striking museum display. We looked at lots of different images of museum displays from different sorts of museums - from songbirds with display boards on pillars made to look like trees, to a wall of photographs, to large banners, to striking colour on screens and many other ideas. We then took down some of the class ideas for what worked and what didn't.
It is very exciting that the class is having the very special opportunity to design an alternative guide for the forthcoming "From Sappho to Suffrage" exhibition at the Weston Library next month, and the next step in this is to choose either a particular woman featured in the exhibition, or to choose a wider theme to exhibit for your display. For the final ten minutes they all decided which person or theme you would pick, and started thinking about how to develop these into leaflets and displays.
Next lesson, Rosie Sharkey will be returning to help us continue with this exciting task.
