Leeds Stories of the Great War – End of Summer update

August was great for Leeds Stories and now a new term is starting on campus we are definitely raring to go.

August started with the introduction of a new strand into our project, Morley Stories. Morley have an incredibly proactive community and are already starting to think about their plans for the centenary period so we were put in touch via Leeds City Council and are now in the process of shaping how we can co-produce some research together.

Tetley Stories also got going with our first meeting on the Tetley site with 7 participants able to attend, and useful drop in sessions the following fortnights with Dr Laura King. They are a really keen group and have already decided on themes to explore; How the business was affected and made an impact during the First World War, how this links in with alcohol consumption and Women Workers and how this all links together.

We had our first big group meeting for Leeds Stories – a full report is here and you can see photos and video footage on our Facebook page.

There has been a successful recruitment drive for volunteers for the University of Leeds strand and an initial meeting will take place at the beginning of September.

Plans are afoot for working with Urban Sprawl over the coming months to research and produce some scripts as well as putting in a bid to HLF to help them take their plans further than the end of the Leeds Stories project.

Seacroft Arts and Literary group have been busy making plans for researching their local area to produce a booklet of works including poetry, short stories and other creative outputs. They are very ambitious and will also be putting on talks and walks and hopefully a plaque trail, as well as an app!

The schools have been on holiday but nonetheless there was a great turnout of students and teachers involved in the Belgian Refugees project at the group event which was lovely to see. The first session will take place in mid-October.

We also met a museum full of people working on other Yorkshire-based centenary activity at the Leeds City Museum on 4 September. The event was a great success and a report will follow.

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

Find us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/LeedsStoriesOfTheGreatWar