Facing History UK - 2022 in Review | Facing History & Ourselves
Facing History & Ourselves
Speaker with her audience.

Facing History UK - 2022 in Review

Thank you for your support this year - here are some of our highlights. 

This past year has been both challenging and rewarding, and we want to thank you for joining us, whether at one of our community events or professional development opportunities. Your continued support ensures we are helping teachers to diversify their school curriculums, uplift marginalised voices in the classroom and become more prepared to participate actively in creating and protecting an inclusive society.

To move from words to action in a way that eradicates prejudice and builds a connected, kind society, we must ensure the curriculum represents many varied perspectives.
— Beki Martin, Facing History Executive Director 

We wanted to share with you a few highlights from the past twelve months. 

New Resources

With the launch of our new website in the summer, the new Ideas This Week  page now offers a space to connect with teachers, including blogs and assembly ideas, respond to current events and share updates with our supporters.

Our recent Black History Month blog describes how Facing History Teacher Sanum Khan and her students used our resources to integrate Black History into the curriculum moving beyond tokenism to full representation all year round. Find more articles like this on our page.

Discussing Contemporary Antisemitism in the Classroom

This unit is designed to help students reflect on how antisemitism manifests in contemporary society and what needs to be done to challenge it.

Our newest resource Discussing Contemporary Antisemitism in the Classroom brings much needed information and support to enable students to understand the history of antisemitism, how it manifests in our society now, and its deleterious impact. Through the unit students learn that antisemitism is not only discrimination and hatred towards Jews, but also a conspiratorial lens through which some people understand the world. The development of this unit was supported by a grant from The Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR).

We have also published a number of new lessons to support teachers in navigating difficult conversations in the classroom as national and global events have arisen. For example, our lesson on Ukraine: Discussing the War and Refugee Crisis with Students and our lesson on Understanding and Assessing the UK’s Democracy.

Together Again - Community Events in 2022!

This year for the first time since the start of the pandemic we have been able to bring together our supporters at events that showcase our work.

In May, thanks to the generous support of Bankside Hotel we hosted We are Facing History: Standing Up for Democracy, an event providing friends of Facing History with the opportunity to hear from students and teachers and to experience the power of a Facing History classroom.

A Facing History Classroom Experience in action

A Facing History Classroom Experience in action

Facing History friends had the chance to experience a Facing History classroom on 10 May at our We are Facing History: Standing Up for Democracy event.

More recently, we hosted a Salon featuring a panel discussion between Peter Mandler, Professor of Modern Cultural History at the University of Cambridge and Sharon Aninakwa, History Curriculum Leader at St Claudine’s Catholic School for Girls. It was a delight to hear their unique perspectives on the topic of what Lessons can be taken from History and their articulation of the transformative power of critical engagement with the past.

Facing History … gets [young people] to rethink the simple way in which they understand each other, themselves, and the world they’re living in.
— Sharon Aninakwa, History Curriculum Leader at St Claudine’s Catholic School for Girls

This year our approach has helped thousands of young people think independently and recognise their own agency to change their schools and communities for the better. Thank you for sharing our vision, we’re so excited to see what the next year holds. 

We would like to wish you and your loved ones a very healthy, happy and peaceful winter break. 

Beki and the Facing History UK team