Magna Carta in Egham Project Report Magna-Carta-Report | Page 33

Magna Carta Internship
In July 2014 Heathrow Airport made contact with Egham Museum. The Airport was keen to
support the upcoming Magna Carta anniversary, had heard about the Museum’s work and
wanted to help. We quickly identified that the best way to do this was through the creation
of a Magna Carta internship, to assist the Project Manager in creating educational resources
and planning the upcoming exhibition. A grant of £6,000 was made by Heathrow (which was
topped up by £4,000 from Runnymede Borough Council – see pop-up exhibition below) to create
a £10,000 internship. This was awarded to Steven Franklin, a PhD student at Royal Holloway,
whose thesis explores the commemoration and reception of Magna Carta. Steven then worked
closely with the team at Egham Museum to develop and refine the learning resources and co-
curated the pop-up exhibition in the United Church.
One of Steven’s tasks was to help write material for the pop-up exhibition, including, as illustrated above,
text relating to such diverse subjects as Sir Francis Burdett’s symbolic use of Magna Carta to protest his
arrest in the early nineteenth century and Tony Hancock’s famous reference to Magna Carta in his 12 Angry
Men sketch: “Did she die in vain?”
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