The Centre for Hidden Histories: Community, Commemoration and the First World War

The Centre for Hidden Histories has supported a number of projects which explore the experiences of Germans in Britain during World War One.   We are pleased to announce some news in relation to two of these projects.

The ‘In the Wrong Place, At the Wrong Time’ project has announced a whole series of events both in the UK and Germany for autumn 2017.  These include a Heritage Open Day in Lofthouse, Wakefield on 10th September 2017 and the opening of a Lofthouse Park exhibition at  Wakefield One/Wakefield Local Studies Library and Museum on 11th November 2017.  For full details of the 2017 Lofthouse Park Heritage Open Day, please click here: Heritage Open Day Lofthouse Park Revisited.

Dr Ben Braber, who organised a schools project with the Trent Academy Group has published this research in Midland History, Volume 42, Issue 1.  Students from the Trent Academy Group who participated in this project, each contributed one day’s research to the article, “Living with the enemy – German immigrants in Nottingham during the First World War.”

To read the research findings of Ben’s project, please click on the link below for an open access version of his article:

Braber open access version of article

 

On 19th-21st July 2017, Dr Will Pooley (University of Bristol) organised a British Academy supported conference on ‘Creative Histories’ which was held in the Clifton Pavilion at Bristol Zoo Gardens. I was fortunate to be selected to present a paper.  This was on the evaluative methodologies of the ‘Reflection Workshop’ and ‘Shared Experience Workshop’ that the Centre for Hidden Histories team have developed. These evaluative methodologies have provoked discussion about the individual, social and cultural impact of our First World War One university and community partner projects.

The range of conference presentations was incredibly diverse, with talks by Julia Blackburn on the process of writing creative histories as well as panels on ‘colonial archives’; ‘history, creative writing and crime’; and ‘history out and about’ in public.  I spoke as part of a panel on ‘public engagement’, which was chaired by Dr Richard Stone and also included a paper by Gisele Lecker de Almeida (Ghent University). Gisele’s paper discussed recent developments in public history in Brazil, including the huge popularity enjoyed by Brazilian historians from across the political spectrum on social media.  The discussion at the end of our panel included a consideration of the role played by the UK and Brazilian governments in encouraging or discouraging public history; the impact of political crises on the popularity of public history; and the extent to which social media promotes more top-down or democratic approaches to history. We also talked about how we can shift considering the ‘impact’ of projects from a focus on outputs to considerations of ‘process’ and ’embodied legacies’.

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Registration is now open for the First World War Discovery Day on Monday 4th September 2017 10am-4:30pm at the City Rooms, Leicester. Please click here to secure your free place  

The Centre for Hidden Histories, in partnership with the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) will be hosting a free event to explore the possibilities in researching and commemorating the First World War.

The event is aimed at any community groups who have, or wish to develop, an idea for a First World War project.

Groups who have successfully completed HLF-funded projects will talk about their experiences of developing and running them, and expert advice will be on hand from the WW1 engagement centre teams to assist participants in developing their projects.

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