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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Matthew GrenbyORCiD, Dr Barbara Gribling
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
The BBC offered broadcasts for schools almost from its inception; a significant strand of this programming focussed on teaching children about the material remains of the past in their own localities. Employing an impressive roster of historians, writers and educationalists, the BBC experimented with innovative formats to engage children with what we would now call ‘heritage’. In Scotland first, then England and Wales, programmes aimed to construct national identities on the basis of children’s aural encounters with specific historical sites and artefacts. Young listeners were encouraged to become ‘heritage makers’ themselves, investigating their historical environments, collecting local stories, archiving objects, writing guidebooks. While at first these programmes seem largely concerned with the preservation of historic sites from the encroachment of modernity, gradually the localised remains of the past were used more explicitly as a means of moulding citizenship in the nation’s youth. The Second World War gave this nation-building programming a new urgency, while post-War broadcasts challenged children to use their historical environments as a basis for building better places for the future. Analysing broadcasts from the 1920s to the 1940s, this article shows how this local history, ‘Rural Environment’ and ‘Regional Survey’ schools programming constitutes an overlooked chapter in the history of the BBC’s attempts to reach and influence new audiences. It argues that these broadcasts pioneered new ways of deploying place-based history to fashion future citizens, anticipating the educative function that has now become an expected part of heritage provision.
Author(s): Grenby MO, Gribling B
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Modern British History
Year: 2024
Pages: ePub ahead of Print
Online publication date: 01/07/2024
Acceptance date: 17/05/2024
Date deposited: 23/05/2024
ISSN (print): 2976-7016
ISSN (electronic): 2976-7024
Publisher: Oxford University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwae049
DOI: 10.1093/tcbh/hwae049
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