Leeds Stories of the Great War – July update

Leeds Stories of the Great War has had a very busy month of July. It started with a visit to the AHRC Connected Communities Summit hosted at the Edinburgh Conference Centre on the Heriot-Watt University campus. For a full account of our contribution to the event click here.

The second week in July brought our first meeting of the Seacroft Stories of the Great War Group which is made up of members of Seacroft Arts & Literary Society and Dr James F. Stark. They have some great ideas and will be exploring a number of elements of life in Seacroft during the First World War. Their outputs will form at least: a booklet of poetry, prose and fiction as well as some online content.

In the third week of July we set up a new research group which will focus on investigating the impact of the University during the First World War. This will be led by Dave Stowe (find him on Twitter @DBS48) who is a local historian. We are recruiting the rest of the team from anyone who works, studies or has graduated from the University so if you’re interested in getting involved see the call out here. We also met with the schools who will be working with us to explore stories about Belgian Refugees, Allerton Grange and Roundhay Schools. Lots of ideas and we look forward to starting work in earnest in September.

Last but not least we recruited a team of volunteers who will be working with Dr. Laura King and PSL on Tetley Stories. A public call out was sent out and a group of people from the local community have registered their interest. We will even be working with one team member virtually as they are now based in Canada!

We are now working on ideas to bring a Leeds Stories of the Great War flavour to this year’s Heritage Open Days.

If you would like any more information about Leeds Stories of the Great War, please get in touch with the Project Officer, Anna on A.R.Wiseman@leeds.ac.uk

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