Reflections on the Centenary: Learning and Legacies for the future

June 2021: Reflections on the Centenary of the First World War: Learning and Legacies for the Future

How did community and academic researchers come together to work on public heritage and public history projects over the course of the First World War centenary? This Report examines this wider question through a focus on the five university-based First World War Engagement Centres that were funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to develop partnerships with community researchers over the course of the ‘long centenary’ (2014-2019).

This Report is the first major outcome of this research project and was co-authored by Professor Lucy Noakes University of Essex, Dr Emma Hanna, University of Kent, Professor Lorna Hughes, University of Glasgow, Professor Catriona Pennell, University of Exeter and Dr James Wallis, University of Essex and Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

The First World War centenary saw large-scale interest and participation among the wider public. The creation and structure of the First World War Engagement Centres, established at the start of 2014, is outlined in Section One. The Engagement Centres funded a range of co-produced projects that brought community and academic researchers together. These projects are discussed in more detail in Section Two, while the range of other activities undertaken by the Engagement Centres is discussed in Section Four. Many First World War heritage projects were funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund (now National Lottery Heritage Fund), and a number of these worked with the First World War Engagement Centres. A detailed study of some of these partnerships can be found in Section Three of this report.

Many of the projects that we examine produced websites and other digital legacies (for example, photos, digitized objects and documents, blog posts, recordings) that showcased their research. These outputs, and the vexed question of their preservation, are discussed in Section Five of this Report.