They buried Salwa Bughaighis in Benghazi yesterday. From reports it is clear that the mood was angry and highly charged, the eulogies powerful and emotive.

Two days earlier Salwa was murdered at home by Islamic militants just hours after undertaking her final public act; placing her vote in Libya’s Parliamentary elections.

She leaves behind not just three children, who now grow up without a mother — their father is also currently missing — but also the hope she exuded on the streets of Benghazi and to a nation still searching for some semblance of order, three years after Gaddifi’s downfall.

You can read a beautiful eulogy to her incomparable exuberance and belligerence here

Salwa spent her life defending Islamic militia during Gaddifi’s reign and was predictably at the vanguard of the movements that ousted him. In recent years she risked her life to campaign relentlessly for the development of an open, democratic society.

She was a feminist and a freedom fighter and her death leaves Libya, for now, on a trajectory without hope, shorn of her defiant optimism.

Shortly after reading of Salwa’s assassination I read this piece on the quiet heroism of Marjan Sidiqqi’s attempt to get women in Afghanistan on their bikes and to represent their country in the 2020 Olympics.

It filled me with joy.

Near a roadside kiosk where fresh plums, cherries and mulberries dangled from strings, a curious Afghan man sidled up to Marjan.

“Are you with those cyclists going around the mountain?” he asked.

Startled, Marjan’s eyes darted around as she braced for trouble.

“Yes,” she replied hesitantly.

“Are they boys or girls?” the man enquired.

Marjan’s face lit up with bravado.

“Girls,” she beamed proudly.

Marjan has some way to go, but she is demonstrating the same indefatigable spirit that was the hallmark of Salwa’s life. She is ‘living the dream’ and through the act of getting her and her friends out on their bikes is creating a compelling metaphor for what freedom means.

Next year we commemorate the 800 anniversary of the Magna Carta.

In recent posts here and here I have tried to argue that we need to move beyond the ceremonial and the parochial next year.

I have suggested celebration, education and agitation as a way of framing how we engage the public who won’t watch the BBC Starkey series or visit the British Library exhibition.

Perhaps we need to add remembrance as well.

Over the past few weeks I have been engaging with campaigners, NGOs and many others exploring how we can bring some popular curatorial flair to proceedings next year. Salwa’s tragic death in the afternoon and Marjan’s living her dream keep tumbling in my head as I begin to cohere my ideas and vision. What resides in their respective stories is a very human, emotive and imaginative courage and it to these qualities that those of us who have ambitions to stir up next years anniversary must look for inspiration.

My next post will set out more details about my vision for how we begin to marshal this into a programme of events and actions.

As ever would welcome your thoughts @steve4good

was horrific enough, but that casting a vote in the parliamentary elections in Benghazi was her last public act adds a terrible poignancy to her death at the hands of the Islamic activists she once fought so bravely to defend during Gaddifi’s reign.

Salwa for those who knew her and worked with her was an irepressible beacon of hope and defiance. She conducted herself with exuberance and courage; her violent death is unbearable.