The British Museum and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) have launched a campaign focusing on world history, to be relayed on television, radio and the internet.

At the heart of the scheme is BBC Radio 4 series, A History of the World in 100 Objects, which started on 18 January.

The 15-minute programmes will be aired at 9:45am from Monday to Friday (with a repeat at 19:45), and each show will focus on one object from the museum’s collection.

Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, said: “Parliament set up the British Museum to allow all ‘studious and curious persons both native and foreign born’ to construct their own history of the world and to find their place in it.

“Thanks to the incomparable reach of the BBC – radio, television, World Service and the web – as the series develops, everybody across the UK and across the world will be able to participate, using not just the things in museums, but their own objects as well, to tell their history of the world.”

The project will also include a 13-part series called Relic: Guardians of the Museum for CBBC; “large scale activity” across the BBC Nations and English Regions, with 350 museum venues around the UK contributing; omnibus editions broadcast on the BBC World Service and the launch of a “digital museum” website at www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld