Do you love History? Do you want to become a good historian? Do you want to find out more about archives? Do you want to win a prize?
Hampshire Archives Trust holds an annual History competition for students in Hampshire. The competition for the new academic year (2026-27) will launch in September (2026). You can enter a project on any aspect of history in Hampshire and could win a significant cash prize for yourself (if you enter as an individual) or your school or college (if you enter as a class or as part of a group in your school or college).
Types of projects that you can enter in the competition
Projects can be, for example, on the history of your town, village or street, your school or college, your family, or a particular historic event in Hampshire. Entries will be welcomed in a variety of forms: essays, films, blogs, posters, etc.
Perhaps you want to create your own oral history project: recording your fellow students, friends, teachers, family members or neighbours talking about aspects of their pasts, or of local or great events. For example, you might want to record people talking about their experiences growing up in your town/village years ago – voice recordings that will help future historians know and understand what local people did and experienced in that time.
Whether you are writing, filming, or recording things about the history of your locality, family or an historic event in Hampshire, you will need to demonstrate the use of archives in your chosen project.
What are archives?
Most people think of archives as being old documents stored away in a museum or library. Well, archives can be old documents, of course. They can be parish records, criminal records, census entries, letters, diaries, and all sorts of other documents. But archives also include things like photographs, film footage, and sound recordings. Provided you use archives in your project, your project can be entered into our new competition.
Categories and Prizes
Years 7-9 – Group: Prize: £300 towards books/resources plus a Winner’s Trophy
Years 7-9 – Individual: Prize: Cash prize of £100 and a Winner’s Certificate
Years 10-11 – Group: Prize: £300 towards books/resources plus a Winner’s Trophy
Years 10-11 – Individual: Prize: Cash prize of £100 and a Winner’s Certificate
Sixth Form – Group: Prize: £300 towards books/resources plus a Winner’s Trophy
Sixth Form – Individual: Prize: Cash prize of £100 and a Winner’s Certificate
As well as the cash prizes for the group and individual winners, winners will also receive a winner’s certificate. Highly commended certificates will be awarded to runners-up who produce good projects.
Use of Archives
Although projects can use secondary sources, particular weight will be given to the use of primary sources in the form of archives. Such archives can, of course, include documents (letters, diaries, legal documents, etc.), but archives are not restricted to documents: photographs, film footage and recordings can also provide a wealth of valuable archival material.
Timings and Entries
It is free to enter projects. Entries need to be made through your school or college. More than one project can be entered in each category. For example, there may be more than one class in the same year group that wants to submit a project or several students who each want to do an individual project. However, a group or an individual can only submit one project each.
Entries have to be submitted via your school or college. They can be submitted any time from the start of the Spring Term to Friday 19th March 2027 i.e. THE DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES IS 19th March 2027. So, you have between now and the beginning of March to work on your project. The winners will be announced in the Summer Term 2027.
Further information
If teachers or students have questions about the competition or would like more information, please email Dr Alistair Dougall: schoolscompetition@hampshirearchivestrust.co.uk
