Designed and created by a collaborative team of historians, artists, and musicians, Billy Waters: Songs from the Shadows is a brand-new FREE educational resource consisting of a graphic novel and a song intended for students aged 11-16. Drawing upon Billy Waters’ lived experiences, this 20-page educational graphic novel allows students to navigate their way through the little-known and often ambiguous life story of a sailor, musician, husband, and father. Waters’ story shows how he overcame social barriers and prejudice in the 18th and 19th centuries when people faced discrimination due to their class, race, or disability.
Billy Waters: Songs from the Shadows resources go beyond yet also complement the curriculum to:
- Present a nuanced view of marginalised historical experiences
- Encourage critical thinking about historical narratives
- Provide a visual and engaging approach to learning history and literature
- Spark student engagement with the past through multimodal learning
We would now like to share these resources with Methodist schools worldwide and learn how teachers and students in different cultural contexts respond. UK teachers have reported significant impact from using these resources. They used the graphic novel to initiate meaningful conversations about race, disability, and the transformative power of storytelling. Their testimonies reveal that Billy Waters resources ‘expand our knowledge of Black artists, writers etc from the past that shaped British culture’ and ‘give the students a chance to see things from a different perspective.’ A history teacher remarked that ‘we use the story of Billy Waters to learn about themes of agency, exoticism, racism, assimilation, culture, public discourse (compared to John Blanke and Lord Kitchener, the calypso singer).’
These resources support Methodist educational values by helping students develop empathy, understand issues of social justice, and recognise the inherent worth of every individual, preparing them to serve as agents of positive change in their local and global communities.
If you or your school would like to pilot these materials and share feedback, visit our website https://ageofrevolution.org/home/billy-waters/ to find out more and request your free copies. For any questions, or to discuss how best to integrate this resource into your lessons, please contact Research Assistant Himan Heidari at heidarih@roehampton.ac.uk or Dr. Mary L. Shannon at mary.shannon@roehampton.ac.uk