Impact case study database

Our Magna Carta Project, through its new discoveries, high-profile exhibitions, media exposure, and contributions to public debate, has literally ‘made history’. With its print and digital outputs now established as a permanent enhancement of Magna Carta’s legacy, the project has informed and permanently altered perceptions of Magna Carta as a cultural, historical, and legal icon whilst bringing into focus the charter’s contemporary relevance to society and culture, in the UK and beyond. Impact arising can be quantified as follows:

The British Library Exhibition Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy ‘could not have been staged as it was, but for the input of Vincent and the UEA project’ (Head of Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts, British Library, 5.1). It won approval from all shades of opinion, left and right, populist and academic. The exhibition was described by the Telegraph (5 stars) as ‘rich and authoritative … tell(ing) this fascinating story with exceptional clarity’ (5.1), and elsewhere as simply ‘wonderful’, commending in particular ‘Vincent’s sharp analytical narrative of the events leading to Runnymede’ and his ‘investigations into continental parallels for the charter’ (Reviews in History 5.1). The Guardian judged it ‘ gripping ... (a) wondrous array of materials ... a call to stand up for your rights by any means necessary’. Its footfall (125,000 visitors, 115,000 tickets sold, against a target of 80,000) was almost 80% higher than for any ticketed exhibition previously staged at the Library ( 5.1), ensuring that the latest learning from the AHRC-funded research project achieved widespread exposure. This was reflected not only in the exhibition itself, but also in the exhibition catalogue (8,500 copies sold, 7,500 of them paperback), the British Library’s major public events programme, and the Library’s Magna Carta website ( bl.uk/magna-carta), all of which drew heavily on the project’s findings, with extensive contributions from PI Vincent, CIs Carpenter and Breay, and RA Lock. For 54,000 (53%) of the visitors this was their first visit to the British Library. In the 196 visitor surveys conducted, and 20 qualitative interviews (each of 25 minutes), the exhibition scored 9.16 out of 10 for enjoyment, 9.57 for ‘providing quality information to help explain the collections’, 9.56 for ‘providing opportunities to think and learn’, 9.54 for ‘bringing the collections of the Library to life’, and 9.51 for ‘inspiring you to find out more’. Comments from members of the public ( 5.1) included ‘a brilliant range of sources’, ‘really gave me a feel for the history behind Magna Carta’, ‘Five editions of the charter in 80 years … I hadn’t realized this’, ‘a privilege’, ‘I did look at it very, very differently’, ‘you become awed at how something so small had such a big impact’. As the BL’s Head of Manuscripts reports ( 5.1), collaboration between UEA and the BL supplies ‘ a model for the mutually beneficial integration of a research project and a major cultural programme, magnifying the impact of both’.

Public Debate and Advice to Parliament and the Law: The project was ‘central to the overwhelming success of the 800^th anniversary celebrations’ of Magna Carta in 2015 ([*] [*redacted text*], Chairman Magna Carta Trust, 5.9). More than this, amidst what could all too easily have become a celebration of myth rather than substance, the project offered repeated reminders that the past is a foreign place. Not only did people do differently then, but to various constituencies (Ireland, India, Jamaica or wherever else English ‘liberties’ have been employed as a means of distinguishing the rights of ‘subject peoples from those of native-born Englishmen) the triumphalist account of Magna Carta as a ‘passport to liberty’ must appear grossly over-simplified. Acknowledged for its scholarly nuancing of the record, the project’s advice was solicited by a variety of public figures, including Downing Street, members of the British royal family, and institutions and individuals both nationally and internationally. For example, [* redacted *] (Governor of the Bank of England) used materials supplied by Vincent for a keynote public lecture on Magna Carta and the economy (Lincoln Cathedral 2015), drawing parallels between economic outlooks in 1215 and 2015. [*redact*] himself reports that without Vincent’s ‘advice and the academic research programme from which it flowed, that lecture simply could not have happened’ ( 5.2). [*redacted text*] (Master of the Rolls) and [*] [*redacted*] (Chief Treasury Counsel) took advice from Vincent and other project members before staging a major Magna Carta debate (‘The Trial of the Barons’) in Westminster Hall. Flying the flag for UK PLC, project members toured four continents, with the British ambassador to Italy, for example, commenting that Vincent’s FCO-sponsored speech in Rome, in May 2019, was ‘informative, insightful … a great prompt for a lively discussion’ ( 5.7). [*redacted text*] [*red*] (former House of Lord librarian 5.4) reports that in the build up to the 2015 celebrations, Vincent’s Very Short Introduction to Magna Carta offered ‘a masterly yet accessible overview’, supplying ‘essential and informative reading to parliamentarians of all parties’. Vincent’s collection of essays, she writes, ‘underpinned our whole programme of exhibitions and events’. This included a display in Parliament’s Royal Gallery visited by 800 MPs and peers. In the process, she concludes, the UEA project not only made a substantial contribution to Parliament’s celebrations, generating 76 media articles with an estimated reach of 11,611,910, but through both the Westminster exhibition and its subsequent regional outreach (extending from Newcastle-upon-Tyne via Birmingham to Cardiff), ‘ informed and enhanced debate about the future of the UK’s democracy’. In the Australian Parliament, Vincent’s broadcast was described by the Clerk to the Senate ( 5.6) as ‘a triumph … a big part of the success of our Magna Carta celebrations’.

Teaching and Popular Perception: In 2013, Magna Carta became specifically incorporated within the UK National Curriculum at Key Stage 3 ( 5.10) and, following this, materials from the project website were freely distributed as teaching packs to schools across southern England. These materials are still used online in UK and US schools, as are short films that Vincent made for the Annenberg foundation, the American Bar Association, the British Library and interviews with Melvyn Bragg (still available via YouTube and BBC), with Reddit ( 5.10, estimated by Reddit as receiving 8000 reads, besides occasional visitors), and Russ Roberts (econtalk, 5.10, including posted comments such as ‘wonderful’, ‘fascinating’, and ‘cogent’). Books, articles, and teaching materials produced by the UEA project appear on the syllabuses of university courses in which Magna Carta is taught, around the world, from Brazil via Turkey to China. Vincent’s Bodleian book is judged ‘the standard listing for students’ ( 5.10), his Very Short Introduction to Magna Carta has been translated into Bulgarian and Chinese, and others of his essays were translated into French, Armenian, Chinese, and Italian, in edited collections specifically intended to offer a nuanced understanding of Magna Carta to international and non-Anglophone audiences.  The project’s findings are also more widely disseminated via popular works of history, including [*redacted*] bestselling 1215: The Year of Magna Carta. [*red*] himself writes ‘The Magna Carta Project website … was one of the principal sources on which I drew … elegant and richly populated, it presents world-class research and scholarship in a way that is accessible to all’ ( 5.5).

Legacy and Display: The anniversary celebrations also confirmed the need to rehouse and re-display Magna Carta, not only at the British Library but elsewhere. The new permanent exhibition in the British Library incorporates materials from the UEA project, including talking-heads videos by Vincent and Carpenter (upwards of 20,000 YouTube views, 2.5 million views via the BL site by 2018) ( 5.1). At Salisbury, Hereford, Lincoln, Canberra, Washington and elsewhere, Magna Carta was likewise redisplayed, with materials from the project integral to these efforts to explain and contextualise the charter. At Washington, for example, Vincent’s translation of the Latin charter into English is an integral part of the display. From Hereford, the Canon Chancellor reports that Vincent and the project were not only complementary to the charter’s tours of China, Portugal, and Italy, but ‘ of vital help to us’ ( 5.8). In Hereford, London, Lincoln, Salisbury, Washington, Canberra and all those many other places around the world where it is displayed, not only is Magna Carta better understood as a result of the project, but the charter’s legacy has been permanently enhanced. In the process, a regular stream of income has been generated, not least for those institutions such as Hereford Cathedral capitalizing upon Magna Carta as an object of popular fascination. As reported by the Chancellor of Hereford, the project ‘enabled us to achieve a far greater impact than we would have otherwise managed, driving up visitor numbers and helping us to make a financial success of things’ ( 5.8).

As a particular instance, consider the case of Sandwich Town Museum: Thanks to Vincent’s rediscovery of the Sandwich Magna Carta ( 5.3), the Kent Archives in Maidstone achieved unprecedented media attention ( time.com/3700712/magna-carta-scrapbook). In consequence, Vincent’s chief contact there, [*redacted text*] was reassigned from administration to direct engagement with the archives and the general public. The Archives have since enjoyed enhanced advocacy at County Council level, with consequent protection in terms of funding. An exhibition of the charter in Maidstone was visited by 4,956 members of the public. In turn, international media attention led to a bid from Sandwich Town Council for a permanent exhibition of the charter, and a new town Museum. GBP120,000 was granted from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Museum reopened in 2017 with Vincent as chief patron ( 5.3). Vincent’s discoveries, and the consequent publicity, gave the Museum a ‘centre piece’ around which their collection could be reimagined and rebuilt. It is open all year, and, according to the Mayor of Sandwich, ‘in a more accessible, interesting and informed manner … trace(s) the story outwards from the Sandwich charters to a much more nuanced appreciation both of Magna Carta’s significance, and of Sandwich’s place within a wider national and international past’. Visitor numbers have increased tenfold from 1500 to ‘ 16,000 visitors a year from all over the world … Families, school groups, and extra-curricular organisations that previously would not have been represented or interested’ ( 5.3). At a time of general retrenchment in local government expenditure, the Museum’s success, a direct consequence of the project’s discoveries, led to the employment of a full-time heritage professional, using Magna Carta itself as a means of reaching out to local schools and community youth groups. This is done through workshops, asking children to write and seal their own personal Magna Cartas, setting out terms that they consider relevant to the present day. In a part of Kent that has otherwise faced severe difficulties over the past 10 years, ‘all of this has had a positive impact on the people of Sandwich and surrounding villages … undoubtedly bringing large numbers of visitors and hence renewed prosperity to the local economy’ ( 5.3).