Voices of the Home Fronts

Victoria and Jo presenting at The National Archives, photograph courtesy of Fionnuala Walsh and the Everyday Lives in War Centre

Last week, Jo and I were at The National Archives in London for the Voices of the Home Fronts Conference, organised by The National Archives and the World War One Engagement Centres. The ‘s’ on the end of Front is important, as the conference concerned itself with home fronts around the world, not just Britain. Talks addressed life during the war in Germany and Australia to name just two.

Part of the pop-up display telling the story of the submarine bombardment of Seaham

We did a presentation on the Seaham Submarine workshop developed for schools and the literally pop-up display. We decided to present this as the workshop and display took a different approach to that which we often do. Our audience at the conference were certainly surprised to find themselves playing ‘Spot the submarine’ first thing on a Friday morning, but they certainly seemed to enjoy the change up from a powerpoint display. This in itself, showed how good it can be to change things up a bit. A former history teacher told us she would have given her ‘eye-teeth for something like this’ when she was teaching.  

Jo and Victoria enjoying the rest of the conference, photograph courtesy of Fionnuala Walsh and the Everyday Lives in War Centre

There were many other interesting talks on topics such as bread (maybe it depends on how you feel about bread, but we found this fascinating), Australian schools, German war brides, and Thailand. 

One of the keynote speeches was a personal one by Michael Roper of the University of Essex who is originally from Australia. He talked about how as a student he did some oral history interviews with his grandfather who had served in Gallipoli and Palestine during the First World War (and showed a fantastic picture of his grandfather on a camel as part of the Camel Corps). Michael identified this as the starting point of his interests that have grown into his career. 

The conference also provided a really good opportunity for us to talk to other archivists, researchers, and academics who were interested in what we were doing and vice versa. 

If any teachers want to know more about the workshop and display, you can follow the link here:

http://www.durhamrecordoffice.org.uk/Pages/FirstWorldWarWorkshops.aspx