Impact case study database

The overarching aim of this case study has been to use the research to enrich and deepen local people’s understanding of how WWI affected their communities and to assist them in memorialising inclusively. Lancaster’s approach has been based around a combination of: in-depth research on war and memorialisation; close involvement with a full range of local partners from local government, the heritage sector, community groups, the media, schools, and the general public; and the innovative use of technology including interactive websites, mobile apps, and a MOOC. The success of this approach has enabled Lancaster to expand its reach to new localities in the region, as well as nationally and internationally.

Transforming commemoration of WWI in the community

Peniston-Bird, Hughes, and Gregory established an array of collaborations with local organisations and heritage venues focused on WW1 centenaries. Their research activities and findings enabled events to go beyond the traditional honouring of male military casualties. In April 2014, Hughes drew on research from [R4] to open an exhibition on conscientious objectors from Lancashire and neighbouring counties at Englesea Brook Museum of Primitive Methodism in Cheshire. This was viewed by approximately 5,000 visitors, contributing to a rise of 20% in annual visitor numbers to this ‘small rural hamlet’ site. Intended to run for 1 year, the exhibition was displayed for 4 years due to ‘overwhelming interest’, as the curator testifies. Viewers appreciated the ‘ fascinating temporary exhibit about WWI that included the experience … of conscientious objectors’ and learned about the ‘ context of many of the issues raised, which added greatly to our enjoyment’ [S1]. Between May and November 2017, the ‘Boomtown’ exhibition at Lancaster City Museum, co-created with Peniston-Bird, explored Lancaster and Morecambe’s home and battle fronts. The exhibition drew on the team’s research [R1-3, R5] and attracted 36,549 visitors as reported by the City Museum. These exhibitions show outstanding reach for two municipalities whose combined population totals 95,000 and which are not prime tourist destinations. A creative follow-up, ‘Blasted’, was dedicated to a munitions factory explosion in Morecambe, where 10 civilian workers perished in 1917. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and developed by Peniston-Bird with schools and the local community, it culminated in 2 live performances at Lancaster City Museum with over 3,000 viewers over two nights (2017). Citizens clearly valued these initiatives which, as one ‘Boomtown’ viewer noted, enabled them to ‘understand Lancaster and Morecambe’s role in WWI’. Another said: ‘ This exhibition dispelled a lot of myths I had grown with over many years’. And another, referring to the explosion, ‘ I have lived in Lancaster all my life and did not know of this disaster’ [S1].

To deepen and localise understanding of WWI heritage, Peniston-Bird devised a pop-up exhibition documenting the explosion. This display toured 6 community and shopping locations in Lancaster and Morecambe, where it was seen by 4,632 viewers before travelling to 3 other places in the North West and southern Scotland. In Greater Manchester, the Fire Service Museum manager described ‘ Plenty of amazed expressions and “I never knew that”’. This motivated him to ‘tweak somewhat’ his ‘own exhibition’. In Eastriggs, one of 795 viewers stated: ‘ It changed my way of thinking about people who worked in the munitions and brought it home what my mother went through’. Another said: ‘ I never knew the women done as much’ [S1]. Collaboration with local organisations and the use of innovative displays thus changed understandings of WWI across the North West and were hugely appreciated in Lancaster.

In 2013, Lancaster City Council established the ‘World War One Centenary Network’ which was closely advised by Peniston-Bird and informed by UoA research. Under her leadership and encouragement, and as a response to the popularity of commemorative events, the Network had doubled in size by 2018 to include 40 local government, education, and heritage sector partners (including faith and military organisations and the Duchy of Lancaster). The Council’s Marketing and Tourism officer explained that the network “ had a transformative impact on the city and region’s commemoration effort” and thanked Peniston-Bird for her “ vision of collaboration and knowledge sharing”, without which the Network’s “ large-scale heritage and cultural project would have been unthinkable” [S2].

One of the Network’s outcomes was a walking-trail app and leaflet, funded by Lancaster City Council and EPSRC [G2, R6], and distributed through local tourism centres. These take users to 15 sites of ‘military and civilian significance’, with findings and testimonies drawn from the team’s research and linked to local locations [R4, R5]. The leaflet proved so popular that it was reissued; to date, 6,000 copies have been used. Sites and testimonies also featured in the final session of a free online course (MOOC), co-created by Peniston-Bird and two Network partners, the Regional Heritage Centre and the Duchy of Lancaster. The MOOC has engaged 8,350 individuals with the research, across 128 countries: users praised this ‘historical delving’ into the ‘lives and stories of everyday people.’ The course won a ‘Customer Service Excellence award’ in 2019, and was nominated by the British Universities Film & Video Council for the ‘Learning on Screen’ award [S3].

A further request from a Network partner, Lancaster Military Heritage Group, saw Gregory and Peniston-Bird launch an additional commemorative resource in 2016: an interactive website, entitled ‘Streets of Mourning’, grounded in their research and funded by HLF [R5]. The website mapped the home addresses of WWI casualties, visualising the devastating effect on the community of those deaths. Accompanying oral history narratives came from the local Oral History archive held at the Regional Heritage Centre (Lancaster University) or were newly collected by local volunteers under Peniston-Bird’s guidance. To further engage audiences with the research, 5 story-gathering days in 2016 drew 7,262 participants to public events at Lancaster Castle (Armed Forces Day), Campus in the City (Lancaster University’s pop-up community engagement programme in central Lancaster) and at Lancaster University (follow-up interviews on campus). The number of participants equalled approximately 15% of Lancaster’s population. The HLF’s report commended this project for creating heritage ‘learning, curiosity, awareness and enjoyment’. In 2017, 5,000 members of the general public explored the ‘Streets of Mourning’ website over 3 days and the following year, the website was employed by the City Council to engage citizens once more during Armistice Day commemorations. This included displaying excerpts from the research and findings in home, pub, and shop windows. ‘ It’s amazing you walk down that street many times not knowing its story’, said one Lancastrian. ‘ This really brings it home’, said another [S4].

To further memorialise local experience, memorabilia connected with the testimonies were collected in Lancaster, Preston, and Barrow-in-Furness through a project led by the Regional Heritage Centre, advised by Peniston-Bird. The Oral History archive was also digitised. As a direct knock-on effect, the local charity, Mirador Art, invited artistic responses inspired by the oral histories. In 2018, Mirador reported to HLF 69 ‘creative impacts’ linked to the oral testimonies, including installations, live performances, poetry, and a film which won the AHRC Research in Film Award (2018). These events drew 11,612 and 59,000 through online reach [S5].

The inclusive and popular approach to commemoration raised attention to heritage in the local media. In 2016 and 2017, Peniston-Bird was twice invited to appear on North West Tonight (reaching an audience of approximately 1 million) and gave 5 interviews on Lancaster’s local radio station, The Bay Radio FM . She also gave 4 interviews on BBC Radio Lancashire (average listeners 200,000) and had 17 local press interviews and articles ( Lancaster Guardian, 11,000 print copies per week), Lancashire Evening Post (12,000 print copies per day) and 18,970 combined total daily online views) [S6].

To ensure enduring impact, the research team partnered with the Curator of the King’s Own Royal Regiment museum to write a popular history of Lancaster in WWI ‘Lancaster: remembering 1914–18, Great War Britain’ (Stroud: History Press, 2017), highlighting the civilian dimension and drawing on the research. Described as ‘excellent’, based on ‘serious research’ by readers, 500 copies were purchased in the first 15 months after publication. It became a local bestseller, with the local manager of Waterstone’s store reporting “ it sold more copies than Jamie Oliver’s cookbook” at the Lancaster branch [S7].

Enabling children to engage with and contribute to inclusive commemoration of WWI

To achieve sustained impact, the researchers also engaged with schools. In 2014, Peniston-Bird was invited to deliver a WWI workshop at Moorside Primary School (Lancaster), introducing pupils to the untold stories of local experiences. By 2018, all Year 6 pupils in the school were studying the local and inclusive dimensions of WWI with ‘immense enthusiasm’, and this continues.

Lancashire Heritage Learning Team, an educational support team servicing North-West schools, signed a formal agreement with Lancaster University in 2018, enabling approximately 60,000 children annually to engage with the research by enriching curricula with local and inclusive histories of WWI at all key-stage levels. New educational resources were based on primary sources relating to [R4, R5], drawn from research insights within [R1-3]. Peniston-Bird has delivered workshops for 41 teachers across the North-West [S8], one primary-school head teacher reporting how teachers found the materials ‘accessible’ and ‘hugely helpful’ in learning about WWI and women and men on the home front. The pupils were ‘inspired’ about ‘bringing back to life’ local and family history. In Lancaster, the programme continues to be used by approximately 60% of primary schools and 75% of secondary schools. Primary schoolchildren were so moved by the source materials studied that in 2016 they petitioned the local MP for more inclusive memorialisation and as a result, the local parish authority erected a new memorial in 2017 to the 10 civilians killed in the 1917 explosion on the former munitions factory site. Since 2018, municipal Remembrance Day events have included pupils reading the victims’ names and laying clay poppies made in art classes.

In 2014, Westfield War Memorial Village, built in Lancaster in 1919 to house disabled veterans, invited Peniston-Bird to co-develop a school outreach programme based on her research. Since then, up to 8 classes have visited each year. As a result of this educational collaboration, the Village’s centenary was marked by the unveiling of a new memorial: to the men, women and children who supported the welfare of the ex-service community. Over 80% of Village residents surveyed agreed that educational exploration of its history is ‘very important’ [S10]. In 2017 Peniston-Bird and Gregory established a summer school for Year 12 pupils, ‘Memorials of WWI and Digital Skills’, with an intake of 15 students per year from widening participation target-groups around the UK. Student feedback demonstrates that the course transformed their views and encouraged them to express how “ memorials mean more than just remembering soldiers who died in war” and bring to the fore ‘unrepresented groups’ [S11]. Enriched local education, has thus enhanced learning and creativity, and the processes of commemoration [S9].

Enabling new initiatives in culture, learning and heritage policy, to ensure longevity of WW1 commemoration

When a new interface of ‘Streets of Mourning’ was launched in 2019, requests from Chorley and Galgate led the researchers to enable other towns to map their communities’ losses and share insights. By 2020, 25 UK localities had registered with the project’s corresponding website entitled ‘Mapping Loss’, including 5 cities and towns in Lancashire and Greater Manchester alongside towns and villages as far afield as Hampshire and Norfolk, all ‘very interested’ to join Lancaster, and to ‘be a part of your project’.

In 2019, the education charity Global Link (which recruited Peniston-Bird as an advisor) initiated a collaboration entitled ‘Learning from the Past (so we are not Condemned to Repeat it)’, funded by Erasmus. By the end of 2020, the project had recruited 350 schoolchildren, girl guides, and adult volunteers across Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia to document local case studies of inclusive commemoration, from WWI to WWII. National teams reported new understandings of heritage, with the Romanians stating, ‘ it opened a completely new field for us … the community and the region learned a lot about the period’ and the Slovenians concluding that: ‘ our local history is quite colorful and not all that black as it was presented to us by local authorities and media through our lives’. Subsequently, Polish volunteers initiated an Erasmus funded follow-up project, with Peniston-Bird as academic advisor, to ensure future engagement with heritage through ‘Sharing learning from the past’ [S12].

As a result of the successes of the Centenary Network, in 2019, Lancaster City Council took the decision to give the Network a permanent status. It was renamed ‘Lancaster Heritage Network’ and its remit was broadened to include ‘all heritage activity in Lancaster and the surrounding area’. Cooperation with Lancaster University and research-informed historical input were ensured by Peniston-Bird’s continued involvement as the Network’s academic advisor. One of the Network’s missions is internationalisation, which benefited from broad commemoration of the local effects of war through the charity Global Link, as described above [S3]. In July 2019, the research-driven, inclusive, and highly popular commemoration of WWI was emphasised by Lancaster City Council within its bid for Historic England’s High Street Heritage Action Zone programme. The bid, for GBP5.75 million, was approved at the first stage in December 2019, and was confirmed as successful in 2020 [S2].

The research has enabled individuals, communities, and organisations to memorialise the devastating effects of modern war and, through this, to connect to an inclusive history. Outstanding engagement with local constituencies has paved the way to broader exchanges among UK communities and European partners, who follow Lancaster in fostering a different commemoration of the devastating effects of war.

Lancaster’s exemplary work on regional history has achieved extensive and sustained impact within northern England. The research collaborations have boosted the participation, learning and wellbeing of over 120 volunteers and enriched the cultural engagement of heritage organisations. The research has also reached widely into national and international audiences, engaging millions more through an online course, exhibitions and the media.

Intensifying the public’s participation in regional heritage

The earliest and most enduring impact was achieved through the VCH Cumbria project, based in the RHC and funded by Cumbria County History Trust. This project has galvanised participation and learning amongst individuals and organisations, training volunteer researchers to work with Winchester, Edmonds and Rose (Research Associate). The project is inextricably linked with Lancaster’s research into regional identity, archives and place-names [R1, R2, R6], which provided a basis for the volunteers’ research guidelines and training.

The project’s first achievement was to produce short histories of Cumbria’s 348 townships, co-written by Winchester and approximately 100 volunteers. The volunteers were drawn from history societies and the community across the county; some had training in historical research, whereas others had no prior experience but wished to pursue historical interests in retirement. The short histories were published in Cumbria: An Historical Gazetteer (Lancaster, 2016) and are freely available on the Trust’s website, which now attracts approximately 60,000 visits per year [S1]. The beneficiaries include a high proportion of interested groups in Cumbria (over twenty organisations) who contributed to the endeavour either as associated groups, funders or trustees. One example is the Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society: by providing resources for training new participants, the project has enhanced this society’s charitable purpose of fostering the study of Cumbria’s history. In the case of Cumbria Archives Service, the research has shaped discussions about access to archival resources, leading to improvements in the system for consulting documents in 2020 [S2i]. The beneficiaries also include around 100 volunteers, whose learning and participation has been transformed. Since 2016, Edmonds and Rose have worked intensively with 50 of the volunteers, who are drafting full histories of parishes ranging from Waberthwaite in the west to Kirkby Lonsdale in the east. In this way, the volunteers have benefited from Lancaster’s research expertise, while providing valuable local knowledge [S3, S4]. The quality of the resulting research is seen in the project’s first published parish history, Kirkoswald and Renwick (London, 2019), by Brockington with Rose. In Landscape History (2019) a reviewer noted that it “contributes directly to the mission of the national VCH of providing ‘authoritative, encyclopaedic histories’ of every parish in the country”.

On a national level, other VCH county teams have drawn inspiration from Cumbria’s volunteer participation; for example, the Cumbria model proved influential in the refoundation of VCH Shropshire in 2015. The Cumbria volunteers’ handbook was, furthermore, used to redraft the revised national parish history template, issued in 2017. The concept of the Cumbrian ‘short histories’ has also shaped the VCH strategy for digital engagement, which aims for comprehensive coverage at a basic level. This strategy has so far led to the creation of an app that maps the histories of every place in England. The Director of the national VCH states: “VCH Cumbria has been instrumental in developing the present-day VCH as a community and public history project, providing a replicable and extensible model for volunteer engagement” [S2ii].

Enriching individuals’ wellbeing through learning

The VCH Cumbria project has created a county-wide community of volunteers with the skills and motivation to undertake further research. They have received guidance through one-to-one sessions and quarterly meetings, drawing on Lancaster’s interdisciplinary research tradition. Recent training sessions between 2017 and 2019 derive from Edmonds’s research into Roman and medieval material culture [R6], Donaldson’s work on early tourism [R5] and the recurring theme of the Anglo-Scottish border [R3, S4]. The meetings have enhanced wellbeing by forming social ties across this dispersed county and deploying the varied talents and expertise of volunteers. An experienced volunteer comments: “My own experience has been one of great and growing enjoyment … I have no way of adequately describing what it means to have my name on the front cover of a VCH short (history). The collaboration has had other very significant consequences … More than 50 individual residents contributed to Kirkoswald and Renwick … The impact on these communities was positive and enriching.” [S3].

This model of collaborative working has had wider impact still by generating new volunteer- based research projects. In 2016 and 2017, Winchester drew on his place-name research [R1] when training 15 volunteers in Rusland, Cumbria, to gather and interpret field names for the Mapped Histories project. The project has since taken on a life of its own, yielding an interactive website and 2 books produced by the volunteers themselves (2019). The end-of-project report notes: “The sense of belonging, not only to a group and common cause, but also to the heritage and landscape of their local area, has been a core part of the project ... In terms of their [the volunteers'] well-being, the project has had a huge impact.” [S5iii‒v]. According to the wider Rusland Horizons volunteer survey, 89% of participants felt that the project had increased their sense of identity with, and pride in, the area [S5ii]. In 2019 and 2020, Edmonds and Rose used their knowledge of medieval documents to assist 9 volunteers on the Heritage Lottery-funded Kentmere Heritage project. This was a collaborative research project that aimed to uncover the history of the parish prior to 1600 and produce an exhibition in the parish church, fostering the sense of community in this remote valley [S6].

Enhancing cultural engagement in partnership with heritage organisations

The Regional Heritage Centre is a focal point for over 75 organisations, including museums, historic houses and the National Trust. Lancaster’s regional research has transformed the way in which such organisations embed research in their outreach, exhibitions and funding applications. The community engagement uses the same methods as the VCH Cumbria project, such as training events, but this time for beneficiaries in the heritage sector.

Donaldson and Winchester’s research into the origins of tourism in the region [R5], helped to inform the National Trust’s activities to mark the Lake District’s dedication as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017. Donaldson’s participation in the community engagement project The Tables Turned facilitated learning about the contributions that people from Cumbria, including Lakeland writers and artists, have made to world heritage. The project attracted at least 200 participants, including 150 Year 7 pupils from Keswick School, retired miners from Whitehaven and adults with special needs from Carlisle [S7i]. As a result of the project’s success, the organisation changed the way it uses university research to engage with the community, as seen in 3 Lake District properties (Allan Bank, Wordsworth House, Townend). The National Trust’s Participation Officer states: “The project has enabled us to develop a method for engagement from communities with World Heritage OUVs [Outstanding Universal Values] … our collaboration with Chris [Donaldson] has ensured that working in partnership with Universities is now central to our practice … Having research-led activities at the heart of this project was essential to its success.” [S7ii].

Donaldson’s research into Wordsworth’s perceptions of the Lake District [R4] also underpinned a collaboration with The Wordsworth Trust on 2 major exhibitions: Wordsworth Country (April 2016 to June 2017) and By Duddon’s Side (April to June 2017). Wordsworth Country attracted 89,985 visitors and By Duddon’s Side received 11,580 visitors, as well as an online audience of 25,000 (17% from outside the UK) [S8i/ii]. Visitors said that the research “made me see Wordsworth differently” and “definitely made me want to know more” [S9i]. The exhibitions informed the Trust’s planning and preparation for the redevelopment of its museum-visitor experience as part of their successful £4.1million Heritage Lottery Fund project Re-imagining Wordsworth. As well as describing Donaldson’s contribution as ‘invaluable’, the Curator and Head of Learning noted that it “helped us towards how we might display manuscripts in the future … This will feed into the Trust’s activity and interpretation plan for the stage 2 (HLF) application” [S9ii].

From the region to the world: revealing northern history to international audiences

The activities described so far demonstrated an international interest in, and demand for, up-to-date information about regional history research. Edmonds and Donaldson responded to this need by creating a free MOOC hosted by the FutureLearn platform, entitled Lancaster Castle and Northern English History: The View from the Stronghold. The RHC produced the course in partnership with the Duchy of Lancaster, also involving 6 other regional and national organisations, such as The National Archives. The MOOC draws on Lancaster’s tradition of regional research by using the castle as a microcosm of northern English history, showcasing Edmonds’s research into the Northumbrian kingdom [R3, R6] and Donaldson’s work on tourism (Lancaster was a key staging post en route to Lakeland in the 19^th century) [R4].

Across 3 runs (October to November 2018, 2019, 2020), the course attracted 8,479 participants from 127 countries. In 2019, it won a Customer Service Excellence award and the British Universities Film & Video Council nominated it for a prestigious national ‘Learning on Screen’ award. The course is in the top quartile of History MOOCs for learner retention and completion. In 2018, learners made 10,882 comments, demonstrating that the course had transformed their appreciation of regional history. One commented “you have an exceptionally wonderful asset, the castle of Lancaster. Using it as a means of illustrating not only its own history, (but also) the history of northern territory and neighbouring lands, has proved a most refreshing experience”. 92% of the 389 participants in the end of course survey (first run) felt that they had gained new knowledge. 50% of these participants were inspired to find out more, and so Edmonds created an extra week of medieval resources, including an exercise on the Scottish raid of 1322. One learner commented “it was very much a surprise about the Scottish involvement, hope to learn more” [S10]. Across the 3 years, 48% of learners were located internationally. 308 learners stated that they would now visit Lancashire; in 2020 one learner commented “My first priority once I can do so is to come and see this wonderful castle for myself after spending the last 7 weeks walking its history” [S10]. This indicates an impact on tourism, which Edmonds is now developing in partnership with Marketing Lancashire, supported by ESRC Impact Acceleration funding.

Lancaster’s projects have generated further impact through talks and media coverage. Since 2017, the RHC has hosted 5 sold-out study days on related topics for 610 learners; 93% of those surveyed said they learnt something new [S11i]. Donaldson, Edmonds and Rose have presented talks to 57 history societies across northern England and southern Scotland, reaching approximately 3,250 adult learners [S11ii]. Their research has received significant attention in the regional press and radio (combined reach of 161,369 people). Edmonds’s work also gained international coverage through Dan Snow’s History Hit (3million listeners per month), while Donaldson’s research featured on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Making History’ in 2017 (3.28million listeners) [S12]. Such coverage ensures that the next generation benefit from, and join us, in our research.

Innovative and inclusive research produced in Lancaster has enabled individuals and institutions worldwide to engage more easily with, and better understand, a painful chapter in history. The research has: enhanced the memorialisation of Atlantic slavery and the slave trade in the UK, USA, France and the Caribbean; raised public understanding of the legacy of slavery; enriched learning and education; and affected the perceptions of millions of people around the world.

Enhancing memorialisation of the Atlantic slave trade in the heritage sector

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In July 2019, Radburn was approached by Georgetown African American Historic Landmark (GAAHL) to assist the US National Park Service in memorialising eleven slave voyages that had arrived at Georgetown’s historic waterfront between 1731 and 1761. Radburn’s research, alongside data from SV [R6], was used to inform the signs subsequently erected in the landmark site and an accompanying pamphlet, all depicting Liverpool ships. In December 2019, Radburn’s expertise was called upon again during GAAHL’s successful petition to the US Congress to have a permanent monument installed; the Bill was being processed as of December 2020. In November 2020, after a public competition in Richmond, Virginia, a plan was elected to line Monument Avenue with bronze plates. As the winning architects explain, this will be sourced from a statue of Robert E. Lee and will form ‘a spatial timeline of a dataset’, which will replicate SV’s ‘Timelapse’ feature, co-created by Radburn [S3].

Radburn and Barber joined forces in 2018 to provide research-based advice to Lancaster’s Regional Heritage Centre and the city’s Maritime Museum on a travelling exhibition, documenting the history of the Lancaster ship Abram, which carried slave-grown sugar from the Virgin Islands. This included editorial work on the banners and publicity, and adapting the exhibition, previously presented in Lancaster, for audiences in the West Indies. When the display reached the British Virgin Islands, the governmental Culture Department decided to promote it more widely and actively than originally planned. Prior to the exhibition opening, local museums had been damaged by a hurricane, so the Department designated alternative venues, in sports centres and public halls, with opening times extended to enable citizens to access the exhibition during public holidays. The Culture Department further prepared a documentary on the exhibition, which was broadcast through a Government site. Two guest speakers interviewed emphasised the exhibit’s merit for enhancing local heritage: “ why are we putting a display on a British [ship and plantation] owner? [Because] it’s important for us, and for any people on the earth, to know who we are, and from where we came”. One of the speakers encouraged “ all the people who live in the Virgin Islands to see this, and to understand a particular aspect of the history of the Virgin Islands”. As she explained, the display also sheds light on historical understanding of the local economy [S4].

The launch of the revised SV resource in February 2019 catalysed further knowledge exchanges with Radburn and heritage museums in the USA, UK and France. Radburn has twice advised the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture, Washington DC (2 million visitors a year), which employed SV in its galleries “to create our transatlantic slave trade walls with ship names”. The Smithsonian has embedded the resource in its Department of Education’s learning labs, alerting visiting students to the resource. The Curator has also used the 3D model in seminar teaching to bring the website’s data ‘to life in a whole new way’ [S5]. At Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum, the Curator commended this “ fantastic resource”, installed in the museum’s galleries and made available to the general public and students through its Educational Department. In France’s principal slave-trading port of Nantes, the Head Curator of its Musée d’histoire was so inspired by the quality of Radburn’s research on the images of the La Marie-Seraphique, which hang in the Musée, that he partnered with SV to produce a new 3D digital model of that specific vessel. A video of the digital model will become a permanent installation at the Musée in 2021, and will give visitors a sense of what a slave ship was really like (also enriching the study programmes of approximately 50,000 school and university students who visit the Musée each year) [S5].

Enhancing public understanding of the history of the Atlantic slave trade

In addition to activities in [text removed from public version], the Virgin Islands, USA, UK, and France, the research has had rapid impact further afield. Since its launch in February 2019, SV has attracted 860,000 unique visitors, 70% of whom were located in the USA. The remainder came from 228 countries and world territories, identified by Google Analytics, including places in Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America, revealing particular demand in localities connected with Atlantic slavery [S6]. Radburn’s 3D ship model has been viewed at least 187,000 times, with average sessions showing repeat use. It was accessed by teachers, students, and journalists, indicating not only frequent and diverse use but also spiralling effects. Pulitzer-prize winning New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones was so affected that she tweeted in May 2019 to 215,000 followers that if they want to understand why “enslaved people did not simply overtake the vastly outnumbered slavers during the Middle Passage”, they should watch the 3D video [S7]. Some followers evidently rushed to view the website, leaving messages such as “ stunning, SV is an amazing resource”, “ It’s been on my mind all day”. In December 2019, popular historian Dan Snow encouraged his 300,000 Twitter followers to view this “ astonishing resource”. Snow said that “ I haven’t seen a better visualisation of historical data” than the new ‘Timelapse’ feature. His followers visited the site leaving messages such as “ Brilliant visualisation of the scale of this horrific piece of history”, and “ This should be available in every school” [S7].

Radburn has been repeatedly sought out for his expertise on understandings of the Atlantic slave trade. In 2019, he consulted with programmers on the BBC’s A House Through Time, to enable historian David Olusoga to identify a Bristol slave ship captain and highlight the pervasiveness of the slave trade [3.2 million viewers, S8]. Olusoga’s on-screen use of SV to undertake his research led to an immediate leap of 260% in UK-based user figures [S6, S8]. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the Wall Street Journal (2.8 million circulation) turned to Radburn to compile maps and infographics from SV to underpin an article on Liverpool’s historic links to the slave trade [S9]. Owing to his twin specialities in digital humanities and slave trade history, Radburn has also been approached by PC Gamer to explain the difficulties in depicting slavery in video games: an article citing him reached an online audience of 14.1 million unique monthly visitors and 12,708 more in print in June 2019 [S10]. Radburn is contacted regularly by members of the public for information on the history of enslavers and the enslaved. Following correspondence with him, an American citizen used the research to discover that her ancestor was a slave trader, whereupon she became active in racial healing, sharing her story in the local press (100,000 readers) [S11].

Enriching understanding of the history of the Atlantic slave trade in diverse educational settings

During academic and school terms between April and November 2019, SV user numbers almost doubled from an average of 25,157 hits per month to 46,338. By October 2020, hits had almost trebled, reaching 74,066. At the same time, the average session length had nearly doubled, indicating that the resource has had a particular impact in classrooms worldwide, from primary to tertiary education, especially in the USA [S6]. Users’ comments received by Radburn as joint editor of SV’s trans-Atlantic portion testify to its informative nature and usefulness. A Year 12 student at Atlanta Girls’ School had accessed an outdated version of SV prior to 2019 to trace her African ancestry but was disappointed that the “website wasn’t as interactive as she’d hoped”. By contrast, she highly valued the interactivity of the revised 2019 edition and especially the new research-informed ‘Timelapse’ feature [R6], which “she wished had been there before”. A teacher from the Atlanta area recommended the “ incredible” resource that helped her students understand the “gravity and impact” of the slave trade. Another reported use of SV “with 5^th and 10^th graders, both groups equally in awe of the data story it tells”. A teacher from Pretoria, South Africa, praised the “ excellent resource” employed in a unit on “slavery, labour inequality, and the nature of discrimination”. A session by Radburn recorded in October 2020 for a free online course (MOOC), offered by the Universities of Glasgow and the West Indies, had been viewed by 9,218 individuals within the first month, 11% of whom were from the Caribbean. Having studied the ‘Timelapse’ feature, users found “ The graphics about the amount of trips were really shocking, yet eye opening”; “I never really understood the horrid actions that happened in the slave trade. I really don’t know what to say”; “ The barbarous treatment of our ancestors; no words” [S12]. Award-winning poet Clint Smith was so inspired by the resource, he wrote a poem and tweeted, “ I wrote this piece after exploring the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database”. He placed the poem in the New York Times’ 1619 Project special edition , where it reached an audience of over 3.5 million subscribers, and millions more online readers [S13]. One such reader, a lecturer in Decatur, Georgia, encouraged her students to read the poem while the new ‘Timelapse’ feature played in the background. She reported the emotional reaction: “ After the poem, we sat in silence until the voyages stopped” [S12].