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Full title: Digital Drama: Magna Carta Young Curator Badge Project

The Magna Carta Young Curator Badge Project from Digital Drama (www.digitaldrama.org) engages young people in the history and cultural legacy of the Magna Carta through the creation of online media including blogs, video and animation for the Magna Carta Channel on Makewaves, the social network for schools. Students are rewarded with a Magna Carta Young Curator Badge as evidence of their learning and participation.

The Magna Carta Young Curator Badge was piloted with the Runnymede South Confederation of Schools between April and June 2015. The schools performed in the Great Charter Festival on June 14th at Royal Holloway and at the Magna Carta anniversary commemoration at Runnymede on June 15th. Prince William greeted the performers and eight giant puppets, representing people who had campaigned for liberty and freedom over the last 800 years. Students tracked the progress of rehearsal and interpretation of the themes of liberty and freedom via videos, blogs and animation. This accompanied a specific focus on the history of the Magna Carta and its impact on communities across the world. A video of the Giant Puppets Performance can be seen here.

A selected group from Buckingham Primary School who had completed their Magna Carta Badge were selected for a visit to the British Library to see the exhibition and the original document.

Following the main activities, the roll out phase of the project involves working with Makewaves to promote the Magna Carta Young Curator Badge to their community of schools (4,000 worldwide) and young users (70,000 worldwide). Digital Drama has created links for teachers of specific project resources and ‘how to’ guides for the open badge to tie in with the Key Stage 3 curriculums for history and citizenship. Digital Drama filmed a question and answer session from students and a Magna Carta expert Professor Nigel Saul from University of London Royal Holloway that has been uploaded to the Makewaves channel as a free resource to mark the 800th anniversary.

Click here to see over 60 programmes of students’ media made for the Magna Carta Young Curators Badge.

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