Written evidence submitted by the Imperial War Museum

 

Written evidence compiled by Ian Hook, Project and Public Engagement Manager, and submitted by Liz Robertson, Head of Partnerships on behalf of IWM (Imperial War Museums)

Evidence submitted on the work of the War Memorials Register for the duration of Centenary commemorations 2014-2018.

Executive Summary

Lessons from the First World War Centenary

  1. The War Memorials Register (founded as the UK National Inventory of War Memorials, later the War Memorials Archive) was founded in 1989 and upholds the IWM’s founding vision that the men and women who contributed their “toil and sacrifice” during the First World War would be represented. The Register is the IWM’s longest running digital project and offers online information on nearly 81,000 memorials.

 

  1. During the Centenary the level of support provided by DCMS enabled:

2.1 Existing information held in digital form to be made publicly available online in a new interface. From 1 October 2014 to 7 March 2019 the Register enjoyed an audience of 845,344 visitors. No age cohort data is available for these.

2.2 Volunteers to be recruited for both in office and extra-mural collection and input of data, extending the reach of the Museum and awareness of war memorials and improving, broadening and deepening the memorial records in quality and numbers.

2.3 Online release of over 40,000 war memorial images.

2.4 Online release of 1.13 million names from war memorials in searchable form, a unique resource for researchers at all levels, including schools.

2.5   Public engagement across all the home nations, increasing regional interest in memorials and the enthusiasm, and indeed, inspiration, for research, publication and conservation projects. In some cases groups and individuals so inspired were subsequently successful in achieving Lottery funding.  Community engagement and involvement was very productive of new submissions of information and reports on memorials that were not well registered, lacked images or names, had disappeared or had yet to be discovered. Audiences became new “eyes and ears” for the Register bringing with them the priceless advantages of local knowledge, influence and contacts.

 

  1. The First World War Memorials Partnership was crucial “force multiplier” bringing together the combined resources of the IWM, Historic England, the War Memorials Trust and Civic Voice as well as a number of other interested parties. The relationships forged are to continue. Tangible and lasting outputs are:

3.1   An Application Programming Interface (API) to display automatically, on WMR, Historic England’s Statutory Listing detail for war memorials and War Memorial Trust’s unique and changing reports on the condition of memorials.

3.2   An online portal (http://www.ukwarmemorials.org/) maintained by the IWM offering a “one stop shop” for those interested in war memorials, with detail of care, research and relevant organisations and how to get involved in memorial matters.

 

Conclusion

The WMR and its First World War Memorials Partnership stakeholders have been hugely successful in boosting awareness and understanding of the UK’s war memorials. Citizens who have been engaged in the community will become local guardians who watch over a memorial, care for it, ensure its survival and, by advocacy and example, pass guardianship to future generations.

In seeking to trace some memorials from closed schools a number of new Academy Schools were approached to find out if they had information on the fate of their legacy school memorials. Without exception Academies replied that the memorials were now in a place of honour in their newly built premises. This demonstrates that whatever cultures and values were discarded from former institutions it was recognised that their War Memorials were material cultural icons that were, almost alone, worthy of being saved, retained and reinstalled as a legacy to benefit future generations of young students.

 

March 2019