Public history group: Young historians take to the streets
Saturday 3 December 2011
The second of the public history discussion group meetings at the Bishopsgate was on:
Young historians take to the street: school students tackling the big picture of race, protest and immigration control.
Martin Spafford
In 1995 thirty 11 year olds in an East London school spent several months looking at the world of asylum seekers and the politics of immigration control. Last year ten 15 year olds from the same school worked with historians to investigate fascist assaults on the East End over time and how local people have responded. These projects took them onto the streets, into detention centres, to Parliament and even into direct confrontation with organised racism.
Present and former students from George Mitchell School showed clips from their films and discussed with their teacher Martin Spafford the impact of such projects – at the time and in later life – on their politics and values.
Leave a Reply