A 2023 front-end evaluation conducted by the House of European History, with educators across Europe and the UK, showed clearly that teachers identified a growing need for more positive approach to history, one that can generate hope and a sense of agency.
At the same time, teaching contemporary issues, disinformation, contested pasts, war, and polarisation is becoming more demanding. In that context, speaking of hope can feel difficult, naming it, teaching it, sustaining it.
The Hope Manifesto is a response to that reality, and a space to reclaim hope as a professional and pedagogical conviction. It is a shared compass for the history education community: a concise, mobilising text that articulates what this community stands for, and what it seeks to enable.
Rather than bypassing the difficulties educators face, it will start from them, and from the practices that help teachers move through them: what already works in classrooms, what helps students navigate uncertainty, and what sustains a meaningful teaching practice over time.
accessible continuously throughout the conference
were woven into the conference programme
teachers contributed their memories, beliefs and historical moments that give them hope
shaped the contributions into a shared text that speaks for their community
