The Arnhem Experience (Details of this Community Project are set out below) Saturday 11th September 2010 - Evening 1940’s themed dinner dance, to be self financing Saturday 18th September 2010 Morning Museum opens early. Books to be on sale Community Exhibition to be put up in St Peter’s Church hall, open all day and on Sunday if the church allows. Service of dedication to be held in the museum grounds starting at 11 am. There will be a flypast by the Dakota of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. Jeeps will be available to give veterans a guided tour of the ‘Arnhem’ sites around the village. This is provided by the family of a fellow volunteer, free of charge. Museum guides to be available. Lunchtime Reception: venue St Peter’s Church Hall to facilitate maximum numbers viewing the exhibition. This will be self financing Afternoon Showing of the 1946 film ‘Theirs is the Glory’ at the Kinema in the Woods, free of charge, 300 people can be seated, priority given to local residents including youth groups. Museum Displays The museum has a number of glass plate negatives taken by John Wield of members of the 1st Airborne brigade when they were based in the village prior to being sent to Arnhem. Some of these have now been positively identified but need to be developed and display copies made. In addition material is now being loaned to the museum by the families of the soldiers and by the widows of members of the Polish parachute regiments based here post Arnhem. New information regarding this relatively little known period of the village’s history is coming to light. To date we have a tiny corner dedicated to this aspect of the village’s story. We would like to develop our displays and archive using copies of loaned material so that visitors and researchers can access this information. This also includes photographs from the Imperial War Museum showing the King and Montgomery visiting the village just prior to Operation Market Garden. Since this story forms an important part of the village’s history we have taken the decision, as we did with the 617 squadron display to always have an Arnhem presence in the museum. The exhibition of work. Exhibits of work will come from the local secondary schools, Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar school, Bannovallum and St Lawrence’s Special School have already agreed to be involved. Gartree and St Hugh’s School have been contacted. We should like to include examples of the following: 1) Art work Paintings, posters, collages etc.  Photographs – monochrome or colour as appropriate
<Computer generated art work
Sculpture
2) Written work Poems
Stories
Diary entries
Any other forms of creative writing
Related Activities ‘Build a Future’ (a group working with disaffected teenagers) have agreed to help with the erection of the memorial. Air and Army cadets are to ‘adopt a veteran’ on the day. Volunteers are prepared to record reminiscences of visiting veterans to develop an oral history archive. Transport to be provided to enable residents from the local homes and sheltered housing to attend the events. We hope to involve volunteers through VAEL to produce images/footage of the day for Youtube/Facebook and our museum’s websites (including the Lincolnshire Heritage Forum’s website) We are exploring options for the exhibition to tour local schools, following the Arnhem Experience weekend and are currently approaching the Aviation Heritage Partnership regarding the possibility of the exhibition being taken to their sites. We would like to see our Community partnerships strengthened by advertising that the display panels will be available for use by local community groups once our exhibition has been dismantled. Since we are active members of the Lincolnshire Heritage Forum and share the difficulties small heritage sites have regarding the need for display equipment when putting on special events, the panels would also be available for use in the wider heritage community. |