Can history teaching help fight cynicism? In Brussels, 250 teachers are gathering at the House of European History for EuroClio’s annual conference History and Hope – Learning for change, where they will co-write the Hope Manifesto, a collective text exploring how history can become a practice of hope – and how hope, in turn, can nurture the way history is taught. Through positive history, anti-racism, democracy and media literacy, participants will share practices to give students agency rather than resignation. In this interview, Laurence Bragard and Guido Gerrichhauzen, on the initiative of this project, explain why this bottom-up initiative gives teachers agency – and why that matters far beyond the classroom.
Missions Publiques. Why did the House of European History choose this moment to launch the Hope Manifesto initiative as part of the conference?
Guido Gerrichhauzen. About three years ago, we began a large-scale front-end evaluation, working with 1,000 teachers to identify what was missing in their daily practice – whether it was learning gaps, a lack of materials, or shortcomings in their curriculum. That research gave us a roadmap for the next steps. Once we had identified the key learning needs, we started developing a digital toolbox with resources teachers can use directly in the classroom.
It also became clear that a community was forming around this work. Teachers wanted to stay connected, contribute their thinking, and collaborate more closely with us. That is what led us to organise a large conference where they could meet, share best practices, and explore new approaches to support their teaching in the years ahead. Within this conference, the Hope Manifesto is a tool for collective reflection – something teachers can take forward and integrate into their practice over the coming years.
Laurence Bragard. One of the outcomes from the evaluation report was that, when we asked teachers what worked best to address topics like European History, European integration, the role of memory, or multiperspectivity (all central to what we do at the House of European History), one of the most effective approaches was what we might call “positive history.” This does not mean avoiding difficult history. It means tackling it through a constructive lens – one of empathy, solidarity, personal diaries, and individual stories: people with agency who tried to make a change, whether they succeeded or not. Teachers themselves were surprised to see how consistent this was across European countries.
At the House of European History, our mission is to promote a multiperspectival vision of history and to share it with teachers across Europe. But we are based in Brussels, which makes it difficult for many teachers to visit the museum. This is what drove the development of the digital history toolbox Guido just mentioned, but it also confirmed something else: teachers need training opportunities, stronger connections with one another, and a space to realise how widely shared their challenges around “positive history” actually are. From there, the theme of hope became essential, and that is why we proposed the conference to EuroClio under this theme. It strengthens teachers’ sense of agency and, when translated into classroom practice, extends its impact across generations of students.
Missions Publiques. What do you find most exciting, and perhaps also most sensitive, about working on hope in Europe today?
Laurence Bragard. What is sensitive is that hope can be mistaken for naïve optimism – a way of ignoring complexity or avoiding reality. But that is not what we mean at all.
Presenting “positive history” is not about superficial optimism; it is about giving people a sense of agency. It also creates shared language and a common way of engaging younger generations, empowering them to take action, stay in the game, and remain engaged as citizens and as agents of change. That is what matters to us, and that is what makes it exciting.
It is also exciting because this approach has strong theoretical grounding. We have our own evaluation framework, but we can also connect it with the kind of argument developed by Rutger Bregman: when we constantly predict catastrophe, we risk reinforcing hopelessness and disengagement. This is the case, for instance, with climate change. By contrast, when we highlight credible pathways for change (and collective, inspiring initiatives that resonate with many people) our potential for impact grows.
For teachers, the ripple effect is especially significant. A history teacher who attends this conference or reads the Hope Manifesto may work with 100 to 150 students every year and may have decades of teaching ahead of them. That is an enormous reach. Teachers are actively looking for tools: that is what they tell us, and what we observe. Since we opened in 2017, 25% of our museum audience has consisted of schools and teachers. We may not often hear about them in the public sphere, but they are working every day. And if we give them the right tools, this project becomes incredibly exciting to develop.
Guido Gerrichhauzen. We live in a very cynical and polarised world today: cynicism is high for many people, and so is polarisation. I see hope as something that can work against this. Concretely, as we built the programme for the conference, we looked at how to bring a sense of hopefulness into every element: the speakers, the keynotes, the workshops almost as medicine against cynicism and polarisation.
"Presenting 'positive history' is not about superficial optimism; it is about giving people sense of agency.
Laurence Bragard
Project Manager in Museum Education at the House of European History.
Missions Publiques. Your conference programme is very ambitious in addressing complex topics, especially in teaching and history. How did you build the programme, and how did you integrate these different dimensions?
Guido Gerrichhauzen. We selected speakers and keynote contributors whom we felt could really bring this “medicine of hope” to the forefront. For the workshops, we collaborated with EuroClio and launched a call for contributions with a clear framework, inviting teachers, organisations, and other actors who also see hope as a useful approach.
This made it a genuinely bottom-up process: we did not simply dictate the programme. In total, we have around 40 workshops, forming a diverse set of contributions aligned with the pillars we defined. For example, there is a strong focus on anti-racism, which is one of the programme’s key pillars, as well as on democracy and citizenship values.
Laurence Bragard. First, we developed the overarching theme of “History and Hope,” and then we added sub-themes suggested by the Learning Team at the House of European History, which we agreed together with EuroClio.
The themes are centred around multiperspectivity, democracy and European values as well as anti-racism particularly as we are opening a temporary exhibition (“Postcolonial?”), which is part of the programme.
These themes are also reflected in HistoriCall, the House of European History’s digital learning platform, which provides ready-to-use resources for teachers across Europe in 24 languages. Within this framework, we are launching two new modules at the time of the conference: “What is Racism?” and “Trust or Trash”, focusing respectively on anti-racism and media literacy. The platform also includes existing modules such as “EU Pioneers” and an “EU Timeline”, dedicated to European integration and values.
Across the four days, these themes are woven into a broader learning journey. We have also included a cultural programme, as the event takes place in Brussels and many teachers are coming from abroad. It offers them a valuable opportunity to better understand the Belgian context.
Iit is equally important for participants to discover other museums in Brussels, such as the BELvue Museum and the Royal Museum for Central Africa. We also wanted to highlight the local school landscape, which is particularly diverse in Brussels
Through our partnerships, teachers will have the opportunity to visit a range of schools, including European Schools as well as schools from both the French-speaking and Flemish communities. This diversity allows them to engage directly with different educational contexts within Belgium. To support these visits, we have developed background materials that introduce both the Belgian education system, and the European School system, the later being characterised by multiperspectivity and multilingualism.
Overall, our aim is to broaden participants’ horizons so that, by the end of the conference, they have gained a deeper understanding not only of the House of European History, but also of the European institutions, the European Schools, the Belgian education system, and the wider cultural landscape of Brussels.
Missions Publiques. Why was co-creation such an important part of the Hope Manifesto from the outset?
Guido Gerrichhauzen. Teachers are the ones in the classroom: they know best what is happening there. Our role is to support them. We learned from experience that the most useful things we can offer are: first, teaching materials they can use directly; second, a conference where they can share best practices; and third, a manifesto.
It would be neither appropriate nor reasonable for us to presume that we are best placed to determine the content of such a manifesto, over the three days of the conference, we are giving teachers the agency and the platform to shape it collectively—to identify what matters most to them. Our role is then to facilitate and connect: to help bring this manifesto forward and ensure it reaches the right people. We invited a member of the Commission, and the chair of the CULT committee to receive the manifesto, and respond to it.
Laurence Bragard. This is also simply how we work in formal learning. When we develop HistoriCall, our digital modules, we start with a front-end evaluation, then develop a prototype, then test it with around 100 teachers from 20 countries over two weeks – reaching 1,000 to 1,500 students – and then debrief the results.
That collective reflection is where you really see the power of this approach: voices from North, East, West, South, and the centre of Europe, converging. The Hope Manifesto is an extension of this – giving even more room and ownership to that moment of collective creation. Teachers genuinely like working together, appreciate being asked questions, and take pride in ownership. That hidden gem, the passion of teachers, is what we are trying to bring to the foreground.
"We live today in a very cynical and polarised world. Hope is the medicine for this.
Guido Gerrichhauzen
Head of Learning and Outreach Department at House of European History
Missions Publiques. What would you like participants to take away from this experience?
Laurence Bragard. I hope they will be proud of what they have co-created, proud to have shown that collaboration at this scale is possible, across countries and contexts. Teachers spend their days asking students to work together; now we are asking the same of them. And rather than simply listening during a professional development day, they will be creating the content themselves. That sense of ownership is what I most hope they will take with them.
Guido Gerrichhauzen. I echo that. I hope they genuinely embrace hope: not as naïve optimism, but as an antidote to hopelessness. The alternative to hope is hopelessness, and that is exactly what we need to avoid. For me, hope embraces critical reflection, collaboration, and openness to change and improvement. If teachers leave this conference with that energy, this sense of engagement, and if the manifesto becomes something they can share and build upon, that would be a great achievement.
