This Happens In War
26/02/2010
The St.Andrews Preservation Trust Museum at 12 North Street, St.Andrews will be open for an extra exhibition this year running from 27th February until 7th March, daily from 2.00 – 5.00. It is entitled “This Happens in War” and is part of a Scotland wide project called “Their Past Your Future”, which is an initiative of Museums Galleries Scotland, supported by the Big Lottery Fund. The exhibition in St.Andrews will look at the Home Front in World War II and also deals with subsequent conflicts. This Happens in War is a partnership between The St Andrews Preservation Trust, the Museum of The Black Watch, YMCA Perth and Atholl Country Life Museum.
This Happens in War hosted a series of events in 2008 in order to gather and record personal histories from veterans living in the Fife and Tayside area. Stories from local veterans who served during World War II and subsequent conflicts will illustrate many facets of the experiences of those who lived at the time.
This Happens in War is part of Their Past Your Future Scotland. TPYF Scotland is a fantastic opportunity to ensure that the memories of war are never forgotten, enabling generations within communities to discover personal stories which have affected or involved their local area.
Information display panels from the travelling exhibition, including photographs relating to St.Andrews, will be on display in the museum along with exhibits selected by Claire Robinson, the Preservation Trust Museum curator, from the Trust’s own collection. The exhibits fall clearly into a number of sections: conscription and national service, rationing, air raids, gas masks, evacuees, national internment and registration. Unusual exhibits include a siren suit for wearing in air raid shelters, a dress made out of parachute silk and a blackout lampshade. Along with standard civilian gas masks there is a baby’s gas mask on display.
On show are many documents including government publications and information notices, ration books and also papers relating to a number of St.Andrews families, notably the Jannettas who were interned during World War II because they were of Italian descent.
The exhibitions will be complimented by a DVD of reminiscences from people who lived through, and veterans fought in, the Second World War. These reminiscences and many more will be available online from June 2010 at: www.RememberingScotlandAtWar.org.uk. This free educational resource will be a global legacy, available to schools and the wider community. The stories collected by This Happens in War will be available in more detail on the site.
The St.Andrews exhibition is part of a regional tour, which will see similar exhibitions in the Atholl Museum of Country Life and the Black Watch Museum in Perth. Two schools have also been visited with a travelling exhibition as part of the project – Harris Academy in Dundee and Pitlochry High School. Claire Robinson is keen to encourage local schools to organize visits to the St. Andrews Preservation Trust museum.
Claire has also arranged for Fife Council’s award winning museum and gallery MAC Bus to be in St.Andrews in Church Square from 27th February through to 7th March. The MAC Bus is a specially commissioned vehicle that takes travelling exhibitions from the Council’s Libraries and Museums Department out to communities throughout Fife. The exhibition is entitled “Blackouts, Bombs and Bananas” and also deals with the home front during the Second World War.
More specifically it is about childhood in WW2. An interactive exhibition, it looks at wartime Fife from the child’s perspective and includes many artefacts and images from library and museum collections. The project takes it title from Maggie Gray’s book on the subject.
It is hoped that the MAC exhibition will complement “It Happens in War” at the museum and that all who go to the MAC bus will then visit the museum and vice versa.
As reported in:
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St Andrews Citizen (26.2.10)
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Courier & Advertiser (27.2.10)