We're famous!

MC-ers, it has been a while!

How are you all? The summer holidays are probably just a distant memory now, but we hope you spent yours feeling as happy and relaxed as the barons did 800 years ago when they were chilling out in the fields of Runnymede after King John had signed the Magna Carta.

It was a brilliant summer for the MC project here at Oxford Brookes University. When we last spoke in the middle of July we were revelling in the fact that our Magna Carta symposium had been a success and that our A Modern Magna Carta exhibition had opened in our Glass Tank exhibition space, and from then on things just went from strength to strength.

As planned once the exhibition had completed its run in the Glass Tank we moved it to the Museum of Oxford, where it was then on display for the majority of August. This meant that lots more people got to see it (we’re pretty sure even the ghost of King John turned up at one point) and the lovely people at the museum even ran some special workshops alongside it, which was great!

Our A Modern Magna Carta exhibition
on display at the Museum of Oxford

During its time at both venues the exhibition received brilliant feedback from visitors. Oxford Brookes staff and students, friends and family of the artists and the wider general public were consistently impressed by both the quality of the artwork and the messages of equality and fairness.

Thank you again to all 106 of you who contributed work to the exhibition, you really did do an amazing job. And hey, thank you to those of you who didn’t too, just for being great and still reading this blog.

Anyway, do you know what’s even better than naturally-a-little-bit-biased-us saying how great everything was? The fact that both That’s Oxford TV and The Oxford Mail have published pieces all about it!

Without further ado, if you’d like to watch the That’s Oxford TV piece you can do so here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhAMaxyKsFs&feature=youtu.be&a

And if you’d like to read The Oxford Mail article that’s available here: www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/opinion/columns/university/13789298.University_Life__A_modern_and_enjoyable_take_on_the_Magna_Carta

So although it's sad that the exhibition is now over, at least we’re all celebrities now! We’ll be hanging out at awards ceremonies with Taylor Swift in no time at all.

Taylor Swift at an awards ceremony
(www.taylorswift.com)

We really hope you enjoy this coverage and that you share it with your friends, family and teachers. Also, if you have any comments or feedback then please do get in touch with us on Twitter at @BrookeSchools.

And finally, as it’s been a while since our last post, if you’re wondering what’s still happening nationally with the Magna Carta 800^th anniversary celebrations then check out this article in the Independent about the 'Magna Carta 800 Global Tour' that kicked off last week: www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/original-magna-carta-copy-has-arrived-in-new-york-city-10513397.html

If anyone fancies a trip to New York then let us know!

Very best wishes,

The Oxford Brookes Magna Carta Team

A great month for our Magna Carta project

MC-ers!

Can you believe that in just a couple of days’ time the Magna Carta will be 800 years and ONE MONTH old? How time flies. It won’t be long before we’re all meeting up to celebrate the 900^th anniversary!

But enough of the future, what a past month we’ve had here at MC HQ at Oxford Brookes University. Apologies that we haven’t managed to do a blog post about this until now, we’ve just been too busy entertaining celebrity rappers and future professional artists.

Akala speaking at our Magna
Carta symposium

It all started on Thursday 18 June with our special Magna Carta symposium. This was attended by over 110 Year 9-13 students from local schools and colleges and featured a key note speech by the MOBO Award winning rapper Akala. The speech was so good that several members of our team said it was one of the best they’d ever seen, whilst the students clearly enjoyed it too as after he’d finished they chased Akala out of the lecture theatre in pursuit of selfies! After this a variety of Magna Carta themed workshops were put on by our academics, from Humans vs Robots to The Patriot Games. These went down so well that one student said ‘I think that the level of understanding that the professors and teachers have is amazing.’ This left our academics feeling very happy indeed and confirmed that the day was a big success.

Then, just a few days later on Monday 22 June we opened our A Modern Magna Carta exhibition in our own Glass Tank gallery. This exhibition features the work of local students aged between 8 and 18 who took part in our Modern Magna Carta Challenge - an invitation to young people to create their own Magna Carta reflecting the rights, liberties and freedoms they believe people should have today. We delivered some workshops in schools and colleges in support of this and then left the students to work on their ideas, and the exhibits they’ve created are both amazing and inspirational. From paintings to poems, sculptures to videos, they’ve done the lot. Staff and students from across the University have been saying how fantastic the exhibition is and on Thursday 2 July we held a special event for the artists and their parents and teachers, and they all thought it was brilliant too.

Guests visiting our A Modern Magna
Carta exhibition in the Glass Tank

And there’s good news - if you’d like to see the exhibition yourself there is still plenty of time for you to do so! It’s staying here at Oxford Brookes University until the end of next week, then we’re taking it to the Museum of Oxford for a bit of a summer holiday. Both spaces are open to the public and admission is free, so you should definitely check it out. Details, including opening times, are as follows:

The Glass Tank, Abercrombie Building, Oxford Brookes University
Monday 22 June - Friday 24 July, 2015
Open 9am-5pm, Monday-Friday

The Museum of Oxford Gallery, Oxford Town Hall
Wednesday 29 July - Thursday 20 August, 2015
Open 10am-5pm, Monday-Saturday

All that remains for us to do now in this mighty long post is to say thank you to everyone who’s been involved in these events. Thank you to Akala, the Museum of Oxford, all the staff at the University and local schools and colleges who have helped us out, and most importantly to all the young people who have gotten involved. You’ve all been a pleasure to work with and the contributions you’ve made to both the symposium and the exhibition have been outstanding. Well done and thank you!

If you’d like to send us any feedback please e-mail us at magnacarta2015@brookes.ac.uk or tweet us at @BrookesSchools. We’d love to hear from you.

We’ll be back soon with some more MC-related goodness.

Very best wishes,

The Oxford Brookes Magna Carta Team

Akala to speak at our Magna Carta symposium tomorrow!

MC-ers!

How exciting was Monday?! The Magna Carta was all over the news, Google did a special tribute to it, some members of our team went to a fancy event also attended by the Queen. It was crazy!

Celebrations at Runnymede on
Monday (www.bbc.co.uk)

This was of course because Monday was the exact 800^th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta - 800 years to the day since King John and the barons met at Runnymede and initiated the process of people in Britain and beyond gaining rights and democracy.

Just in case you missed it, here’s a handy BBC article recapping some of Monday’s celebrations:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-33126723

Anyway that was Monday, this is now. Let’s keep the excitement going…

You know that special Magna Carta symposium we’re hosting here at Oxford Brookes University? Of course you do, you’ll have read all about it in this blog post at the start of April: www.oxfordbrookesmagnacarta.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/activities-you-can-get-involved-in.html

Well, it’s TOMORROW and in a final flourish of excitement we are thrilled to announce that the key note speaker will be none other than the MOBO Award winning rapper Akala!

As well as being a hugely successful rap artist Akala is also both active and acclaimed as a poet, historian and journalist. He writes for the Huffington Post and has appeared on BBC3 to speak about issues such as human rights and freedom of speech - issues that are clearly linked to the Magna Carta. We are absolutely delighted that he has agreed to speak at our event and we can’t wait to hear his views on the Magna Carta and what it still means to the world today.

Akala (www.theguardian.com)

And it gets better - there are still a small number of places available at the symposium!

So if you’re a student in Year 9-13* and you’d like to come along then please check with your teachers and then drop us an e-mail at magnacarta2015@brookes.ac.uk. You’ll have to be quick though!

If you can’t make it tomorrow however but you’d still like to learn a bit more about Akala then we recommend checking out the following:

Akala’s website: www.akalamusic.com

And his legendary half-an-hour long BBC 1Xtra’s ‘Fire in the Booth’ rap freestyle in which he addresses numerous social issues, many of which have clear links to the Magna Carta:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh03JO6EFjo

Enjoy, and we hope to see you tomorrow,

The Oxford Brookes Magna Carta Team

*We're really sorry if you're younger than Year 9, we just have to have a cut-off point for age otherwise we won't be able to fit everyone in.

A special post by the British Library

Magna Carta: My Digital Rights Project

When does online banter become cyberbullying? Does the need to keep us safe from criminals and terrorists, also mean that we should lose our right to privacy? Why should it be important for people to remain anonymous online? As digital technology becomes more and more sophisticated, sometimes it feels like we can’t keep up. For each new piece of software, there’s the opportunity for it to be misused, and so for some years now, people have been discussing whether there should be a bill of rights, or a set of rules, that hold our behaviour to account when we’re online. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web, certainly thinks that there should be, and to celebrate last year’s 25^th anniversary of the Web and this year’s 800^th anniversary of Magna Carta, his organisation the World Wide Web Foundation, has been campaigning for a bill of rights to protect the Web.

How does digital technology
impact upon our rights?

So, what if you had the chance to have your say about how we should behave when we’re online? What would you want to include in a Magna Carta for the digital age? At the British Library, we’ve joined the debate. Since February 2015, we’ve been asking students from all over the world to debate issues around digital rights and responsibilities, before giving them the opportunity to write a clause for our own crowd-sourced online Magna Carta for the digital age, which will be solely based on the opinions of young people aged between 10-18 years old. We’ve had over 3,000 students take part in the debate, from countries such as Thailand, Taiwan, the USA, India, France, and of course the UK.

It’s been really interesting hearing the views and opinions of so many different young people. Creating the learning resources for our website has been really fascinating too: we’ve worked with contributors such as Shami Chakrabarti from the human rights charity, Liberty, as well as Rachel Logan from Amnesty International and Simon Phipps from the Open Rights Group. What’s more, we’ve also had an article written especially for us, by a former director of GCHQ, the UK’s Government Communication Headquarters. Hearing from digital activists, human rights lawyers and those in charge of our security services, has really opened our eyes to the huge range of issues and debates to be had about online safety and our own digital rights.

Young people are encouraged to
get involved with the project

The deadline for submitting your clause is closed, but we’ve now launched our Magna Carta for the digital age. It goes live to a public vote on the 8^th June, giving you the chance to vote for your favourite clause. The big launch is on the 15^th June on ‘Magna Carta Day’. You will be able to see the top ten clauses, voted for by the public, along with all the other hundreds of clauses submitted over the last few months.

It doesn’t stop there for Magna Carta: My Digital Rights and we hope that young people and their teachers will continue to use our online resources and carry on the debate. The website holds lots of great ideas to help your class hold their own discussion, and you will be able to use the interactive website to engage with what other people have already said.

To find out more visit: www.bl.uk/my-digital-rights  

If you are a teacher and want to discuss how you can use this resource in the classroom email us at MagnaCartaSchools@bl.uk

Join the debate on Twitter #MyDigitalRights

Our birthday and Jamie Oliver's food revolution

M to the C to the ers!

Ok, admittedly that may be taking the whole nickname thing a bit too far. But anyway, guess what…

The opening of the Oxford School
of Art (www.brookes.ac.uk)

It’s our birthday today! If you remember back to our very first blog post we mentioned that 2015 is both the 800^th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta and the 150^th anniversary of the opening of what is now Oxford Brookes University, and it’s exactly 150 years today since we began as the Oxford School of Art. How exciting is that?! We haven’t received your present yet though, it must still be in the post.

Also, in completely unrelated but even more important news, have you seen that celebrity chef and all round good guy Jamie Oliver is currently calling for a food revolution?

Jamie’s petitioning the G20, a forum for the world’s most powerful countries, to make food education compulsory in schools across the globe. He sees this as crucial to helping children to lead healthier, happier lives and he’s called food education ‘every child’s human right’. He’s determined to get the G20 governments to take action.

And we believe he can do it, because we know all about the Magna Carta. 800 years ago a group of barons secured some rights for some of the people of Britain by getting King John to sign the Magna Carta, and we’re confident that Jamie Oliver can now achieve something similar. He needs your help though, which you can provide in the following ways:

Ed Sheeran and Jamie Oliver
(www.change.org)

Sign the petition here:

www.change.org/p/jamie-oliver-needs-your-help-fighting-for-food-education-foodrevolutionday

Visit the Food Revolution Day* website here:
www.foodrevolutionday.com

Watch the video for the Food Revolution Day song, featuring the likes of Jamie Oliver, Ed Sheeran and Hugh Jackman here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPbKm34FX9s

We hope you get involved and that you have a great weekend,

The Oxford Brookes Magna Carta Team

*Food Revolution Day was on 15 May so we’re a bit late to the party on that front, but Jamie’s campaign is very much ongoing.

Sign up for e-mail updates and watch this video!

MC-ers!

Does that work better as a collective name for our gang? Or do you prefer the full ‘Magna Carta-ers’? It’s up to you guys; this is a very fair gang. We’re not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do or call you anything you don’t want to be called. We’re not King John!*

Anyway, it’s Friday and as well as that bit of comedy gold we have two gifts for you…

First of all, and we should really have done this weeks ago, if you would like to sign up for e-mail updates whenever we do a new blog post then just drop us an e-mail at magnacarta2015@brookes.ac.uk. We’ll be running this blog for the whole of this MC 800^th anniversary year and we know how difficult it can be already keeping up-to-date with your Facebook account, the news, your fantasy football team, etc, so we’re more than happy to make sure you don’t miss a post on here.

Watch the video
(www.lovehasnolabels.com)

Secondly, and even more importantly, we massively recommend taking a few minutes to watch this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnDgZuGIhHs

It’s really beautiful - we won’t lie, a few tears have been shed over it at MC HQ since our friend Hannah showed it to us earlier this week. As well as watching it (and maybe having a little cry yourself) also take a moment to think: What’s it got to do with the Magna Carta? Are there any links between the two?

Have a great weekend and remember to contact us about e-mail updates,

The Oxford Brookes Magna Carta Team

*King John was the specific king whose powers the Magna Carta was brought in to limit, but we bet you knew that already. And as a result we bet you proper LOL’d at that joke - it was pretty hilarious.

The general election and the Magna Carta

Magna Carta-ers, long time no MC!

Apologies for the lack of a blog post for a while, we’ve been super busy sorting out next month’s symposium and exhibition. You know, those Magna Carta themed events that there’s still time for you to get involved in? Check out this previous post for more information: www.oxfordbrookesmagnacarta.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/activities-you-can-get-involved-in.html

Anyway, while you’ve not had these blog posts to read you might have noticed that there’s a general election going on. That’s right, today in the UK we’re voting to decide on who’s going to govern us for the next five years.

We know that a lot of you won’t be old enough to vote yet (unless we’ve completely misjudged the average age of our readers and you’re actually all pensioners) but before long you will be able to. And that’s good, because voting is a BIG DEAL.

Ed Miliband and David Cameron
(www.ibtimes.co.uk)

Sometimes we can take it for granted in the UK, especially as British politics isn’t always that exciting. I mean, Ed Miliband and David Cameron are hardly the kind of guys you’d want to go on holiday with, are they? But all over the world there are people who can’t vote. And what’s more, people in Britain have fought very hard to have the vote today. For example, did you know that women in Britain only got the vote in 1918? And that was still only women over 30 and only came about after years and years of campaigning.

Now, what’s this got to do with the Magna Carta we hear you asking?* Well, if you’ve been reading this blog since the beginning you’ll know by now that in 1215 the Magna Carta took some power from the king and set out for the first time the rights of some of the people in Britain. And as a result this process of transferring power from the elites to the people has been continuing ever since, with the right to vote being a very important part of this.

So ask yourselves - would your parents and grandparents be able to vote without the Magna Carta? Would you able to in the future?

A general election polling station
(www.theguardian.com)

If you’d like some more information on today’s election and its relationship with the Magna Carta and peoples’ rights in general then you should totally check out the following:

A really impassioned and empowering video about the election and our rights by The Guardian journalist Owen Jones:
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2015/may/05/no-normal-election-dont-let-your-voice-be-taken-away-owen-jones

The UK Parliament’s web pages for schools and young people, which feature information on both the general election and the 800^th anniversary of the Magna Carta:
www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/2015-parliament-in-the-making/2015-resources-for-schools-and-young-people

Enjoy!

The Oxford Brookes Magna Carta Team

*We can't actually hear you, that would be weird.