How many times have you been to a museum or a historical building or a significant place and thought that you want to capture some of its essence to bring back to your pupils? The challenges of geography, risk, expense and staffing can all act as limitations in the planning of school trips. However, if we must be limited in how often we can take pupils out, then the responsibility must lie with the history teacher to explore new debates and new places in the subject and bring those back to the pupils in the classroom. Hannah Moloney was keen to push the boundaries of learning at her school. Inspired by the work of Sweerts and Grice, she wanted to use the music pupils were listening to outside the classroom to develop their understanding of black history. However, developing links with the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum led to broadening her own understanding of the topic and the current debates. A partnership between her school and the museum has led to not only to a new and relevant scheme of work for the school, but also a set of resources for the museum that has considered the needs of pupils and will therefore remain relevant beyond the 2007 bicentenary of the abolition of slavery.