Campaign! Make an Impact is an innovative initiative that uses history to inspire young people into active citizenship. This cross-curricular programme uses historical campaigns to inspire and teach campaign skills, enabling children and young people to run their own campaigns about issues that affect them today. It’s based around a three step model which can be found on this website.

This resource allows you to explore a range of sources from the campaign for the abolition of slavery that began in 1787 - you will be able to look at minutes from the meetings of the Abolition Committee and to examine first hand, eye witness accounts of slavery. It will become clear that the issues of equality, justice and tolerance raised and explored by the resources are just as relevant today as they were two centuries ago. You might feel that the need for campaigns is also just as great. This resource therefore also outlines a series of activities that investigate what made the Abolition campaign so successful and what still makes a successful campaign today.

These resources will allow you to investigate the key themes of Dickens's novels alongside original source material from the British Library. Literary manuscripts, newspapers, letters, workhouse menus and many more fascinating collection items will help students open up the social, cultural and political context in which Dickens was writing. This website includes performances by Simon Callow and discussions by Professor of English, John Mullan, filmed at the Charles Dickens Museum, London.

This site traces the history of English dictionaries from the 1500s to the present day. You can examine how words change their meaning over time, and how scholars have argued over ideas of 'correct' spellings. We have included extracts from a whole range of dictionaries: from 16th century spelling lists and the first English dictionary ever written; from lexicons of criminal slang and Georgian swear words; from Dr Johnson's famous dictionary of 1755; from dictionaries of Caribbean English and Yiddish; and from the world-famous Oxford English Dictionary.

This collection of sources illustrates different aspects of colonial life in India and Africa over the past four centuries. It includes photographs, reminiscences, advertisements, phrasebooks and records of trading transactions. By focusing on a British perspective rather than the voices of the colonised, we have attempted to reflect the way that England saw itself in this period of history, and to show how language reveals the attitudes and opinions of Empire.

In the first half of the nineteenth century, poor sanitation and health care and inappropriate living conditions meant that the life expectancy of Britain's population was low and three in twenty babies died before their first birthday. Campaigners around the country sought legislation that would save thousands of lives every year. This resource allows you to explore a range of sources from this campaign - from cartoons published in Punch magazine to statistical data gathered by the very first health inspectors. Detailed information about each source is available, as are biographies of the campaign's key figures and a timeline and glossary.

The Food Stories interactive, designed primarily for KS3 and KS4 citizenship and geography students, traces the amazing changes that have taken place in the UK's food culture over the last century. Play with colourful animations and listen to audio interviews from the British Library Sound Archive to investigate the ways in which food relates to identity, cultural diversity, the environment, technology, farming, shopping, travel and much more.

The population of Britain grew rapidly during the Georgian period, from around five million people in 1700 to nearly nine million by 1801. It was a time of extreme luxury and extreme poverty, of burgeoning consumer culture and the birth of industrialisation; of spectacular entertainments from exhibitions of giants and exotic animals to public hangings. Explore the newspapers, books, illustrations, posters and political reports of the time to find out more.

For thousands of years the inner workings of the body have provoked fascination, confusion, amazement and even disgust. This site looks at the way different cultures, at various points in history, have looked at the body, and how these ideas have been translated into pictures.

This British Library interactive timeline allows you to explore collection items chronologically, from medieval times to the present day. It includes a diverse combination of texts: those that allow glimpses of everyday life (handbills, posters, letters, diaries), remnants of political events (charters, speeches, campaign leaflets), and the writings of some of our best known historical and literary figures. Timelines is a fantastic resource for learning about culture, politics, technology and everyday life through the ages.

Illuminated manuscripts are the survivors of the Middle Ages, shedding light on both the great events of the period and the everyday life of ordinary people. In this web resource you will be able to examine evidence in a number of medieval manuscripts, finding out more about the social history of the period.

From conkers to singing games, rude jokes to fantasy play, Playtimes brings together 100 years of children’s songs, rhymes and games. Documenting children’s culture from 1900 to the present day, the website includes footage of boys playing leapfrog (1900); girls dancing to celebrate the end of WWI (1919); children re-enacting battle scenes on bomb sites (1947), and numerous examples of children performing ‘traditional’ songs and games such as ‘in and out the dusty bluebells’, hopscotch, or ‘mummies and daddies’. Contemporary films from primary schools in London and Sheffield include children re-enacting scenes from TV game shows, computer console games and pop videos.

During The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour at the British Library, well-known figures perform readings of poetry by some of Britain and America’s most distinguished poets. Here you can access the audio recordings of these events, explore the connection between the poets' lives and their work, study interpretations of their poetry and access suggested classroom activities.

What is sacred? How do we extract meaning from sacred texts? Where do religious stories come from? How are these stories relevant to people today? Explore the scriptures of 6 different religions through these 3 interactives and develop a greater understanding of these questions. All interactives have been animated using images from the British Library's collection.

The UK is a rich landscape of regional accents and dialects, each evidence of our society’ s continuity and change, our local history and our day-to-day lives. This site captures and celebrates the diversity of spoken English in the second half of the twentieth century. You can listen to 71 sound recordings and over 600 short audio clips chosen from two collections of the British Library Sound Archive: the Survey of English Dialects and the Millennium Memory Bank.

In 1928, men and women were given equal voting rights for the first time. Explore British Library sources to find out about the Chartists, Suffragists and Suffragettes who campaigned for this right.

This interactive will place you right in the centre of some of today’s most contentious debates about human rights. You can explore issues such as detention without charge, monarchy versus republic, votes at 16, euthanasia and equality at work. As you give your answers you can see, in clear and innovative 3D graphics, how your views compare with those of other users. Are you content with things as they stand or do you want change? How do you balance societal order with the individual’s right to freedom? How might you express your views in the real world?

The Victorian period in Britain was one of huge industrial and technological change, shocking divisions between rich and poor, sensational crimes, spectacular entertainments for the masses, and grand attempts to combat squalor and disease. Discover Victorian life through high-quality images of the posters, pamphlets, diaries, newspapers, political reports and illustrations that the 19th century left behind, now held in the British Library's collections.