In 2016, a small group of local women working with the Irish Linen Centre & Lisburn Museum set about remembering the centenary of the Easter Rising. The armed 1916 insurrection launched by Irish republicans against British rule was brutally suppressed. Yet, despite the event's political and cultural significance, not everyone in the area was familiar with it.
"Before I learned anything about the Easter Rising, I thought everyone in Ireland was at war," says Angela, a member of the local women's group who worked on the project. "I knew very little of the rising," says Ingrid, another group member.
The group produced their own Twenty-First Century Proclamation for the Nation, in reaction to the Easter Proclamation, which was written by the uprising's leaders. The new statement talks of "striving for an inclusive nation" and "encouraging a passion for learning through education".
"The Easter Rising and Us project was initiated by the women themselves," says Collette Brownlee, the education services officer of Lisburn Museum. "They loved discussing different aspects of 1916 and developing new research skills. We are a council run by the Democratic Unionist Party, so to create this was quite an achievement. It may not be something all the politicians were comfortable with, but they support our community engagement.
"Museums can't sit outside major social questions - we are challenging perceptions without challenging people's beliefs and value systems," Brownlee adds. "People who previously did not visit the museum now have a connection. Until people come in and engage with it, they don't know what kind of resources they are dealing with or how things will evolve. That is risk-taking. That's where the radical part comes in."
The Easter Rising and Us project built on a 2014 collaboration at the Irish Linen Centre & Lisburn Museum, where discussion groups, lectures and workshops supported an inclusive approach to first world war commemorations, balancing the views of the museum's governing body and audiences.
"For the World War One and Us community engagement project we had one adult women's group and three youth ones, and it brought visitors who had never been to the museum before," Brownlee says. "We had never facilitated participants taking the lead, so these community projects meant the museum took risks. It resulted in a co-curated exhibition, which ran for three weeks, and combatted previous negative perceptions of the institution."
Power of the people
The National Trust's Challenging Histories programme has also been exploring less obvious histories related to its places and properties. In 2017, the organisation launched Prejudice and Pride, which looked at LGBTQ heritage across the country with events, exhibitions and installations.
This year, it is tackling women's history and suffrage to celebrate the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which granted the vote to women over 30 under certain conditions. Next year, it will take on the relationship between landscape and radicalism to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Manchester's Peterloo massacre, where government cavalry killed 15 people campaigning for parliamentary reform.
Such landscapes will include Tolpuddle in Dorset, the site of the Tolpuddle Martyrs' tree, under which a group of farm labourers met in 1834 to protest over wages, much to the authorities' displeasure. The tree is now seen as the birthplace of British trade unionism. The martyrs, however, were convicted and shipped to Australia.
"We realised that the biggest interest from community groups, politicians, journalists and academics was the 1990s, as it was the peace and reconciliation period," she says.
So the digitisation project became focused on that decade, taking in events such as Bill Clinton's 1995 visit to Belfast (the first serving US president to do so). The museum's outreach work with victim groups, such as the grassroots charity Wave Trauma, led to two exhibitions, including one on the social and economic impact of the Troubles.
Far-reaching impact
"Manchester is one of the most radical cities, where radicalism that has happened on a local level has impacted nationally," says Antrobus. "Not only are the stories we tell relevant to local people who say they can visit the site where it happened, we also tell stories where national and international visitors have also heard of these same events."
The museum retains local links through its collection, which includes a Peterloo handkerchief, hundreds of which were printed after the massacre to spread the message of reform and raise money for victims. The museum also has copies of American newspapers that recorded the event, along with lists of injured locals.
"We demonstrate how it affected the rest of the world and how it had an impact on Manchester," Antrobus says. Local placards from the 2017 women's march against the US president Donald Trump in Manchester have been collected, including one that says: "From the city of Pankhurst with love."
As well as addressing local histories through stories of protest and radicalism, museums might also have radical takes on entrenched, authorised histories themselves. The Heritage Lottery Fund is supporting Homeless History Newcastle, which aims to write a history of Newcastle from the perspective of the homeless.
Throughout 2018, local archivist and historian Kris McKie has been working with curator David Wright at Durham University, Crisis Skylight Newcastle and volunteers to explore local archives, including records from the Newcastle workhouse, the police and law courts to uncover unheard stories about homelessness from 1850 to the present day.
The project organisers run public events, including a walking tour, a conference on local histories in October, and they are working on an exhibition for January 2019.
"We will be exploring how these people's lives have been shaped by attitudes towards homelessness, by the responses of government and charities, but also looking at a localised setting," says McKie.
"Focusing on Newcastle enables us to tell the story in a more targeted way." The project will explore the more hopeful side of homelessness alongside longstanding negative perceptions.
"Museum collections don't reflect homelessness very well," Wright says. "We have been using a lot of archive sources in a different way, critically looking at court records to pick out personal stories. We will be using these to explore the broader themes around homelessness. It's given us food for thought about the traditional restrictions of showing in museums."
A role for museums
So what do the radicals themselves think? David Morris, part of Northeast London's Radical History Network, was one of the "McLibel Two" defendants in a libel lawsuit filed by McDonald's in 1990 against activists protesting against the company's environmental and employment record. The trial became the longest running in English legal history at the time, lasting almost 10 years.
"Often, we have to collect and promote such history ourselves because rarely have the mainstream media and museums given a platform for radical ideas," says Morris. "But people have moved away from establishment history in the last 50 years. Until then, people involved in radical movements hadn't expected a lot. But we should expect museums to reflect the realities of people's collective efforts to improve their circumstances by challenging the status quo."
Morris recently donated archives relating to the McLibel trial to the Bishopsgate Institute in east London, while the Bruce Castle Museum in Haringey, north London, this year had a display about the local history of Tottenham High Road, including photographs from anti-poll tax protests and an oral piece from Morris about activism on the road against McDonald's.
"There has been a shift towards recognition of radical movements in that museum," Morris says. "There is a recognition that radical history is a part of Haringey history."
He adds that radical movements have been accepted in the mainstream and points to civil rights, feminist and climate change activism, but acknowledges there is more to be done to fully reflect the complexity of radical views.
"Often, the radical tinge of these activists, such as Martin Luther King, who was against the Vietnam war and championed workers' rights, has been airbrushed out of official accounts," he says.
Ultimately, museums, wherever they are and whatever their size, are among the organisations that can ensure the stories of radicalism, dissent and protest are told.
Rob Sharp is a freelance journalist.
"Before I learned anything about the Easter Rising, I thought everyone in Ireland was at war," says Angela, a member of the local women's group who worked on the project. "I knew very little of the rising," says Ingrid, another group member.
The group produced their own Twenty-First Century Proclamation for the Nation, in reaction to the Easter Proclamation, which was written by the uprising's leaders. The new statement talks of "striving for an inclusive nation" and "encouraging a passion for learning through education".
"The Easter Rising and Us project was initiated by the women themselves," says Collette Brownlee, the education services officer of Lisburn Museum. "They loved discussing different aspects of 1916 and developing new research skills. We are a council run by the Democratic Unionist Party, so to create this was quite an achievement. It may not be something all the politicians were comfortable with, but they support our community engagement.
"Museums can't sit outside major social questions - we are challenging perceptions without challenging people's beliefs and value systems," Brownlee adds. "People who previously did not visit the museum now have a connection. Until people come in and engage with it, they don't know what kind of resources they are dealing with or how things will evolve. That is risk-taking. That's where the radical part comes in."
Britain has a long and proud history of social reform and popular dissent, so there is no shortage of radical material to feature in museums. Yet, as July's mass protests against the US president Donald Trump showed, stories of political and social dissent are often associated with large movements and grand narratives.
But projects such as the one at Lisburn Museum suggest radical stories can also emerge at a local level. Whether taking radical approaches to social history or depicting a narrative about radicalism itself, museums must reconcile the need to connect locally with the impact and scale of national stories.
The Easter Rising and Us project built on a 2014 collaboration at the Irish Linen Centre & Lisburn Museum, where discussion groups, lectures and workshops supported an inclusive approach to first world war commemorations, balancing the views of the museum's governing body and audiences.
"For the World War One and Us community engagement project we had one adult women's group and three youth ones, and it brought visitors who had never been to the museum before," Brownlee says. "We had never facilitated participants taking the lead, so these community projects meant the museum took risks. It resulted in a co-curated exhibition, which ran for three weeks, and combatted previous negative perceptions of the institution."
Power of the people
The National Trust's Challenging Histories programme has also been exploring less obvious histories related to its places and properties. In 2017, the organisation launched Prejudice and Pride, which looked at LGBTQ heritage across the country with events, exhibitions and installations.
This year, it is tackling women's history and suffrage to celebrate the centenary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which granted the vote to women over 30 under certain conditions. Next year, it will take on the relationship between landscape and radicalism to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Manchester's Peterloo massacre, where government cavalry killed 15 people campaigning for parliamentary reform.
"It's asking people to look beyond the green, pleasant, and neutral idea of landscapes that many of us have," says Rachael Lennon, the national public programmes curator at the trust.
"We have so many beautiful spaces that are appreciated, but the social histories go unexplored. Next year's programme will explore the power of people coming together to have their voices heard in events that have imbued the landscape with memory and significance."
Such landscapes will include Tolpuddle in Dorset, the site of the Tolpuddle Martyrs' tree, under which a group of farm labourers met in 1834 to protest over wages, much to the authorities' displeasure. The tree is now seen as the birthplace of British trade unionism. The martyrs, however, were convicted and shipped to Australia.
Kinder Scout in Derbyshire will also feature as the moorland plateau where a mass trespass in 1932 protested against restricted access to areas of open countryside. The trust runs a walking trail that follows the footsteps of the trespassers.
"We often don't appreciate these protests consciously," Lennon says. "These fights were brutal, so we are trying to emphasise that the winning of these rights was not inevitable. We want people to appreciate that a bit more."
Devolving decision-making to the community can help. The Divided Society project at the Linen Hall Library in Belfast focuses on the conflict and peace process in the region through the digitisation of items from the Northern Ireland Political Collection, held by the library since 1969.
This comprises 350,000 items such as election leaflets, community newsletters, journals and oral histories. The project needed some direction on where to focus during the monumental task of digitising such a huge collection. The library's director, Julie Andrews, says a plan to digitise all of it was refined after a series of focus groups.
"We realised that the biggest interest from community groups, politicians, journalists and academics was the 1990s, as it was the peace and reconciliation period," she says.
So the digitisation project became focused on that decade, taking in events such as Bill Clinton's 1995 visit to Belfast (the first serving US president to do so). The museum's outreach work with victim groups, such as the grassroots charity Wave Trauma, led to two exhibitions, including one on the social and economic impact of the Troubles.
"We found that when we spoke to people in the focus groups they said: 'We are fed up with politicians, we don't want an exhibition about them'," says Andrews.
"They wanted an exhibition on how people in troubled areas got to work, what the children did at night, things like that. I also wanted to show that not everyone in Northern Ireland was affected by the Troubles, despite what the media may have said. Groups that live three or four miles out of Belfast saw nothing."
Far-reaching impact
Helen Antrobus, the programme officer at the People's History Museum in Manchester, says the institution's strength is its ability to straddle the local and national political arenas - a useful way to highlight local engagement and to draw in audiences.
The exhibition Represent: Voices 100 Years On, which runs until February next year, is a crowdsourced show reflecting on those who have campaigned for better representation. Again, the exhibition marks the centenary of the Representation of the People Act.
"Manchester is one of the most radical cities, where radicalism that has happened on a local level has impacted nationally," says Antrobus. "Not only are the stories we tell relevant to local people who say they can visit the site where it happened, we also tell stories where national and international visitors have also heard of these same events."
The museum retains local links through its collection, which includes a Peterloo handkerchief, hundreds of which were printed after the massacre to spread the message of reform and raise money for victims. The museum also has copies of American newspapers that recorded the event, along with lists of injured locals.
"We demonstrate how it affected the rest of the world and how it had an impact on Manchester," Antrobus says. Local placards from the 2017 women's march against the US president Donald Trump in Manchester have been collected, including one that says: "From the city of Pankhurst with love."
As well as addressing local histories through stories of protest and radicalism, museums might also have radical takes on entrenched, authorised histories themselves. The Heritage Lottery Fund is supporting Homeless History Newcastle, which aims to write a history of Newcastle from the perspective of the homeless.
Throughout 2018, local archivist and historian Kris McKie has been working with curator David Wright at Durham University, Crisis Skylight Newcastle and volunteers to explore local archives, including records from the Newcastle workhouse, the police and law courts to uncover unheard stories about homelessness from 1850 to the present day.
The project organisers run public events, including a walking tour, a conference on local histories in October, and they are working on an exhibition for January 2019.
"We will be exploring how these people's lives have been shaped by attitudes towards homelessness, by the responses of government and charities, but also looking at a localised setting," says McKie.
"Focusing on Newcastle enables us to tell the story in a more targeted way." The project will explore the more hopeful side of homelessness alongside longstanding negative perceptions.
"Museum collections don't reflect homelessness very well," Wright says. "We have been using a lot of archive sources in a different way, critically looking at court records to pick out personal stories. We will be using these to explore the broader themes around homelessness. It's given us food for thought about the traditional restrictions of showing in museums."
A role for museums
So what do the radicals themselves think? David Morris, part of Northeast London's Radical History Network, was one of the "McLibel Two" defendants in a libel lawsuit filed by McDonald's in 1990 against activists protesting against the company's environmental and employment record. The trial became the longest running in English legal history at the time, lasting almost 10 years.
"Often, we have to collect and promote such history ourselves because rarely have the mainstream media and museums given a platform for radical ideas," says Morris. "But people have moved away from establishment history in the last 50 years. Until then, people involved in radical movements hadn't expected a lot. But we should expect museums to reflect the realities of people's collective efforts to improve their circumstances by challenging the status quo."
Morris recently donated archives relating to the McLibel trial to the Bishopsgate Institute in east London, while the Bruce Castle Museum in Haringey, north London, this year had a display about the local history of Tottenham High Road, including photographs from anti-poll tax protests and an oral piece from Morris about activism on the road against McDonald's.
"There has been a shift towards recognition of radical movements in that museum," Morris says. "There is a recognition that radical history is a part of Haringey history."
He adds that radical movements have been accepted in the mainstream and points to civil rights, feminist and climate change activism, but acknowledges there is more to be done to fully reflect the complexity of radical views.
"Often, the radical tinge of these activists, such as Martin Luther King, who was against the Vietnam war and championed workers' rights, has been airbrushed out of official accounts," he says.
Ultimately, museums, wherever they are and whatever their size, are among the organisations that can ensure the stories of radicalism, dissent and protest are told.
Rob Sharp is a freelance journalist.
Helen Antrobus is speaking at the Museums Association Conference & Exhibition in Belfast in a session about the 1918 Representation of the People Act. Collette Brownlee and Julie Andrews are speaking in a session looking at how local museums in Northern Ireland have explored subversive stories from the past to engage with contemporary issues.
