The National Archives Education Service Competition: Celebrating LGBTQ+ lives for Pride 2025
This competition is currently closed.
Calling all Key Stage 3 & Key Stage 4 students to produce a short historical account, poem, film, or artwork that explores story of an LGBTQ+ person in history. This does not have to be a well-known figure. The entry can record a story that you have evidence of and relates to a particular time. Or it could be about the life of a pioneer or activist, based on historical research using documents in our collection, or in other archives.
Winners in each Key Stage will receive a signed copy of the book We Are Your Children written and illustrated by David Roberts. The book explores major moments in the story of the fight for LGBTQ+ rights in the 20th century, including the Stonewall Uprising, the first Gay Pride Rally, and the dazzling history of drag and the ballroom scene. It is a wide-ranging and inclusive account of a multifaceted movement, with detailed and characterful colour artwork.
For younger winners at Key Stage 3 we can also offer David Robert’s book Suffragette: The Battle for Equality as an alternative prize according to guidance from parents/carers. The book brings to life the many vivid characters of the women’s suffrage movement – from the militant activist and wheelchair user Rosa May Billinghurst to the world-famous Emmeline Pankhurst, Millicent Fawcett and Emily Wilding Davison.
An overall winner will be awarded a special illustration created by David Roberts.
Close for entries: 31 August 2025.
Terms and conditions
- One entry per person.
- Entries must be received by 31 August 2025.
- Only work with an entry form will be accepted.
- Entries must be sent to education@nationalarchives.gov.uk with the completed entry form. Without this form, your entry will not be accepted.
- Entry is open to students in Key Stages 3 & 4 for the school year 2024/2025.
- For Key Stage 4, make sure you are not submitting any examination/year course work.
- Your entry must be submitted by email alone, with your permission to share your work online.
- For artwork you may use a variety of mediums – any size is possible so long as a digital photograph is submitted. Please do not send in your original.
- Written text – up to 500 words can be emailed as an attachment.
- Films must be submitted as MP4 movie file and run for no longer than 4 minutes.
- Results of the competition will be published on The National Archives website.
- Winning entries will be showcased on the Education website with some of the documents that have inspired your writing.
- Prize winners will be emailed in September 2025 and will receive their prizes via post.
- All personal information provided in connection with this competition will be processed in line with our privacy notice, which details how we comply with the UK General Data Protection Regulation
- Entries that include personal information about living individuals require express consent from those individuals. This means that if your entry tells someone else’s story or includes their image, you must have their clear agreement for this to be included in your submission and potentially displayed on our website.
- If that person is under 16, you will also need the express consent of their parent or guardian.
- Entries that include personal information of another person for which consent has not been received, will not be considered valid and will not be accepted.
- Consent will be retained for the purpose of administering the competition from the time it is submitted until the winners are announced in September 2025. Following the announcement, all entries, except those of the winners, will be securely deleted.
- Your competition entry must be your own original work and it should not contain material created by other people unless you have permission to use it. You agree that the work you have created can be used by The National Archives and shared with other parties for the purposes stated on this consent form.
Resources
The National Archives looks after 1,000 years of iconic national documents created and collected by UK central government departments. These records include Domesday Book, Magna Carta, Guy Fawkes signed confession and Charles Dicken’s will for example. More recent documents include the passenger lists for the Empire Windrush from 1948. We hold records from the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Central Criminal Court. The National Archives education service creates lessons, themed collections and runs workshops on site and virtually based on these types of documents on different periods of history.
Potential documents to inspire or research could be found in these related blogs and education resources:
LGBTQ+ Rights in Britain
LGBTQ+ history in the archives</a
Dr James Barry
Chevalier D’eon
Edward Carpenter: Free love advocate and LGBTQ+ rights pioneer
LGBTQ+ lives through the census
Fanny and Stella: Piecing together LGBTQ+ histories and telling the stories
LGBTQ+ history: the red rose of Colonel Barker
LGBTQ+ history: Maud Allan and ‘unnatural practices among women’
History Mysteries: Anne Lister
‘Well of loneliness’