A new drama and writing project for 16 Hull primary schools, to celebrate the 200^th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. Using their own research, pupils will devise and perform a modern take on the story of William Wilberforce, and have their writing published in a book that will be used as a future resource in Hull primary schools.

 “Join the intrepid crew of the ‘Starship Wilberforce’ as they set off to explore new worlds in their brand new, state of the art, spaceship. Their mission is to find life elsewhere in the Universe and to report back to Earth what they learn from their trip.

After jetting off into space it is not long before they come across an unidentified planet. Here there are  people who are being forced to work for those in charge – and worse still, some are bought and sold to neighbouring planets to work there. Nobody sees anything wrong in this – it is how life has always been here. There are those that work…and those that don’t.

It is up to the crew to try to educate the people that they have met and they do so by searching through archives and travelling back in time to meet their ship’s namesake. They watch Wilberforce give his speech in parliament, talk to him about his struggles and ultimately ask him to help them in their quest to free those that they have met as they attend an intergalactic meeting of planetary parliaments themselves.”