PHM is the national museum of democracy, telling the story of its development in Britain: past, present, and future.
On this blog we share posts from the PHM team and other experts, with behind the scenes stories, coverage of PHM's exhibitions and events, and highlights from the museum's unique collection.
To complement the display of a portrait of Hugh Hornby Birley, who as captain of the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry played a central role in the events that unfolded at the Peterloo Massacre, we asked author Jeff Kaye to share his research on Birley from his forthcoming novel All the People and treat us to an excerpt about the painting, now in People’s History Museum’s (PHM) collection.
People’s History Museum (PHM) runs a monthly textile workshop, The Fabric of Protest, that brings together conversation and making, politics and craft. Here artist Helen Mather, who leads the workshops, tells us about what happens in the session and what the participants have been learning and creating so far in 2019.
To celebrate International Women’s Day, we’ve invited our former colleague and the National Trust’s new Programme Curator of National Public Programmes Helen Antrobus to blog for us.
Helen is a specialist in the history and collections relating to 20th century radical women; from the women who marched at Peterloo, to the female Chartists; those involved with the women’s suffrage movement, to the first female MPs, and shares with us her insight into the women at Peterloo.
To complement the display of a first edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy from Friday 1 March until the end of April 2019, we invited Dr Michael Sanders, Senior Lecturer in 19th century writing at the University of Manchester to share his insight into Shelley’s protest poem.
In his blog Michael reveals his first encounter with the poem on a record sleeve.
PHM’s 2019 banner display has been carefully curated to reflect key moments of protest in Greater Manchester and across Britain, representing a mix of creatively disobedient ideas and actions along the road to democratic reform, from the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1819 to today.
We asked historian and Head Writer Peter Morgan, from our friends at The Radical Tea Towel Company to review our new display of banners.
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