The First World War and its Legacy 2020 and Beyond: Community, Collaboration and Conflict

The historian Raphael Samuel described history as 'a social form of knowledge; the work in any given instance of a thousand hands' (Samuel 1994). In 2014 the AHRC funded five First World War Engagement Centres to work with community groups to explore the legacies of the First World War. Responsive to community agendas, the Centres offered skills workshops on recording local heritage, and digitization; content specific workshops based on using archive/museum collections or linked to commemorative events; and workshops which explored through a 'temporally inflected lens' issues around silences, representation and memorialisation. The result was that the Engagement Centres created unique community-academic collaborations, generating new knowledge about the First World War and about the value of the past to communities living in the UK today.

However, the nature, context and consequences of the centenary could only be fully appreciated at its conclusion. Similarly, the practices of co-production and multiple partnerships across universities, community and heritage organisations, demonstrated their full potential at a series of the cross-Centre Festivals across the UK in 2019. This proposal responds to both sets of outcomes. The First World War and its Legacy 2020 and Beyond: Community, Collaboration and Conflict aims to sustain the social and cultural impact of the work of 'a thousand hands' of citizen researchers through the co-design and co-production of a series of e-books which will keep in circulation community research as a living resource and in doing so offer a model for future heritage policy around community engagement and national commemoration.

Who might benefit from this research?

- The four lead community Co-Investigators, who are citizen historians, community activists or heritage makers, and who bring distinctive audiences of participants, practitioners and specialists;
- Community participants who will be active in co-curating the project: adult learners, young people and BME community activists;
- The wider communities that engage with, or support, the project partners and participants, including under-represented or culturally marginalised groups in the UK: BME; young people, particularly those with experience of disadvantage; adult learners; older people and people with dementia;
- The community groups whose First World War (FWW) research is showcased in the books;
- Independent researchers whose First World War (FWW) research is included in the books;
- History communities and audiences interested in the FWW, including community activists and community organisations, citizen historians, members of the public;
- History communities and social groups who may be considering their own heritage research project on the FWW or other topics;
- Professionals interested in the potential of public history and heritage projects, including policy makers, civic society mediators, heritage professionals, cultural practitioners, research funders (e.g. the National Lottery Heritage Fund) and research users;
- Academics and HEIs with a focus on public engagement, research co-production and widening participation.


How might they benefit from this research?

- Community Co-Investigators will share leadership and therefore ownership of the project;
- Community Co-Investigators who have not previously worked together will form new relationships, with potential for future collaboration on other projects;
- Community participants will develop four new producer/user communities; they will have opportunities to gain experience and life skills through heritage in a supportive environment;
- History groups and independent researchers will be recognized for the new knowledge they contributed during the FWW centenary; they will become visible stakeholders in the project;
- Community groups across the UK will have opportunities to realise the extent to which they share specific historical interests with researchers elsewhere and therefore make new connections;
- Independent researchers, who often lack a support network and sounding board for their ideas, will be able to engage with others with similar interests;
- The books will bring under-researched and unfamiliar FWW stories to a wider audience;
- Through a series of summative reviews and guides to future research, the books will sustain the community research legacies of the FWW centenary, minimise the risk of future duplication and loss of expertise, and inspire further enquiry;
- The books aim to capture the learning relationships which enabled the generation of new knowledge about the FWW and its legacies;
- Collective reflective practice will facilitate the development of a model that nurtures community research networks and relationships with HEIs, and meets the expressed needs of community-based researchers.