What can we learn about a historical period when we shift our attention away from its most famous figures and look instead at a life that has largely been overlooked?

Billy Waters is not a household name, but his life offers a fascinating route into questions of Black British history, identity, poverty, disability and representation. Teachers can now explore his story with students through Billy Waters: Songs from the Shadows, a set of free educational resources featuring a 20-page graphic novel and digital soundscape for young people aged 11–16.

Born in the late eighteenth century, Billy Waters was a Black sailor and disabled veteran who later became a well-known street musician and performer in nineteenth-century London. His life provides a particularly rich lens through which to explore the society in which he lived, and the lives and experiences that have often received less attention in traditional accounts of the past.

The Billy Waters Project brings together historians, artists and musicians (some of whom are our new Researchers of the Month) to explore his story in imaginative and accessible ways. Drawing on the limited and sometimes ambiguous evidence that survives about his life, the resources invite young people not only to learn about Billy, but also to think about how histories are constructed, whose stories are preserved and how power, identity and representation shape the way we understand the past.

Summary

What does the resource pack include?

The things we do know about Billy’s life suggest that it was dynamic and creative, with music playing an important part in his identity. The researchers wanted the resources themselves to reflect this, bringing together history, art, storytelling and music in a multidisciplinary approach.

At the heart of the pack is an engaging 20-page graphic novel about Billy's life which teachers can use in various different curriculum contexts.

Rather than filling gaps in his story or presenting one interpretation as fact, the graphic novel purposefully makes clear what things are known, what things remain uncertain and where different interpretations are possible. At key points, ‘choose your own path’-style features invite pupils to weigh up alternative readings of the evidence. Alongside the graphic novel, the pack includes a song and soundscapes, example lesson plans and curriculum mapping. These provide different ways into Billy's story and the complex ideas it raises, including through visual and musical material as well as written text.

The resources have also been designed to be flexible rather than prescriptive. Teachers can use them as standalone activities or incorporate them into existing teaching across subjects and topics including citizenship/RSHE, abolition, revolution, war and British history.

Implications

Tips for teachers: why use the Billy Waters resources?

You can use these resources to stretch the timeline of Black British history. Billy’s story can help pupils recognise that Black presence in Britain extends much further back than the histories they may encounter most frequently. Rather than treating Black British history as a separate or relatively recent strand, use Billy to locate it firmly within the wider story of British history.

His story also helps pupils encounter a fuller range of Black historical experience. There is hardship and injustice in Billy's life, but his story is not defined solely by these things. It also encompasses talent, fame, family, humour, resilience and community. Billy was Black, disabled, a sailor, performer, husband, father and public figure. His life can help pupils think about the different aspects of identity that coexist within one person and avoid presenting historical figures simply as representatives of a particular group or experience.

You can use the resources across the curriculum, and not only during Black History Month! Billy's story has clear applications in history, but also connects with English, citizenship and potentially drama. It can sit alongside existing teaching about nineteenth-century London, class, inequality, exclusion, identity and belonging.

Use the resources to encourage an interrogation of historical sources. A central idea underpinning the project is that history is ‘curated, not captured’. The past does not record itself: what survives depends on what people chose to record, preserve and pass on. Billy's story makes this particularly visible and encourages pupils to ask who created the sources that survive, why they were created, whose perspectives they represent and how these factors might shape what they tell us.

Use the gaps as well as the evidence. We know frustratingly little about many aspects of Billy’s life. Use these knowledge gaps to encourage pupils to ask why some lives are better documented than others, whose voices are preserved in archives and what historical silences might tell us about the societies that produced them.

Encourage pupils to interrogate representation. Compare what appears to be known about Billy with the fictionalised character that developed around him. This is a great way to open up conversations around who gets to construct somebody’s public identity, how representations can affect reputation and why a particular version of a person might survive more strongly than the person themselves. There are obvious connections here with contemporary celebrity and media culture.

Allow complexity rather than supplying neat answers. There is much about Billy that we simply do not know. Encourage pupils to distinguish between evidence, reasonable inference and imagination. This provides valuable practice in thinking critically about how historical knowledge is constructed and exposes pupils to some of the challenges historians face when researching marginalised lives. Where the archive doesn't provide a clear answer, historians can draw on comparable lives and wider historical context to establish plausible possibilities. Pupils can be encouraged to do the same.

You could use Billy's story as a starting point in larger or potentially sensitive conversations. Billy’s individual story provides a relatively concrete route into much larger conversations about race, disability, poverty, migration, belonging and inequality. Beginning with what happened to one person can make complex or potentially sensitive discussions more accessible without requiring pupils to begin by disclosing their own experiences or political views.

If time is short, start with an image. Show pupils the opening scene or front cover of the graphic novel before telling them who Billy is. Ask what they notice, what they can infer and what questions the image raises. This creates curiosity and gives pupils an immediate role as historical enquirers rather than passive recipients of Billy’s biography.

Use the resources to encourage consideration of questions like:

• Who gets remembered and who gets forgotten?
• What does it mean to forget?
• Is historical forgetting ever neutral?
• What do gaps and silences in an archive tell us about the society that created it?

Listen to our interview with Professor Shannon, Dr Marsh and Himan here.