Campaign! Make an Impact

Campaign! Make an Impact is an innovative project that uses the Past to teach Active citizenship in the 21st Century.

I am involved in a pilot project to use the 3 step model developed by the British Library (see www.bl.uk/campaign) along Hadrian's Wall World Heritage Site.

Things are moving along, we have 2 groups on Tyneside who began by looking at a campaign from 1870's South Shields. It had been known for many years that a Roman 'Station' lay buried beneath the farmland on 'the Lawe', but in 1875 the building of houses began. Robert Blair, a local solicitor and member of the Society of Antiquarians of Newcastle upon Tyne, gathered support and ran a campaign to excavate and preserve as much of the fort as possible. Blair kept scrapbooks, with letters and newspaper cuttings describing what happened. Eventually the Town Council designated a part of the fort as the 'People's Roman Remains Park' , saving the site to later become Arbeia Roman Fort.

Using this resource the groups have now decided on campaigns that they will run. I'm hoping to post updates on these and the work of the 3 groups at the Cumbrian end of the Wall in a separate blog -http://campaignmakeanimpact.blogspot.com/- so watch that space.