Children on the Move
Children on the Move is a new project working to document the county's experience of evacuation during World War II. It will run until December 2011.
70 years ago, the people of Staffordshire played their part in the biggest domestic mass movement of the population in the history of the United Kingdom. The early months of the Second World War saw 3,000,000 people evacuated from vulnerable towns and cities to parts of the country considered to be safer. Many of these were children and a number came to the towns and rural villages of Staffordshire, from Kent and from cities such as London, Manchester and Liverpool. We know very little about how this momentous event affected people personally and how it impacted upon Staffordshire's communities.
This is a participative, reminiscence project to enable and encourage people to record their memories of children's evacuation to Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent during World War II. The project will gather information from former evacuees and also from residents, who were living at that time in the communities to which children were evacuated. It will also explore how these communities coped with the sudden influx of large numbers of evacuees at a time of national emergency.
The project is a partnership between Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archive Service and Staffordshire Arts and Museums Service and is supported by Staffordshire University. It will run until December 2011. Children on the Move is supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund.
How you could help
- Come to one of our events and share your experience
- Complete a testimony form describing your experience
- Display a copy of our project poster and help spread the word
Children on the Move testimony form (538 kb)
Children on the Move poster (1 Mb)
Events currently planned
Wartime evacuees to Staffordshire and local people with memories of evacuees during World War Two are being invited to attend a series of reminiscence events which will help archive and museum staff to create a lasting record of this important episode in our past.
The project team will be on hand to listen to local people's stories, and their contributions will help to form part of a growing archive of evacuation to the county. For local people with more detailed stories to tell, further in-depth interviews will be arranged and these will help to provide a learning resource for future generations.
To find out more about these events, please contact Natalie Taylor on 01889 881388, or email COTM.projectofficer@staffordshire.gov.uk.
Please revisit this page as more events are planned for the future, but not yet finalised.
Last Modified:
01/09/2010 08:19:05
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