TPYF SCOTLAND - Introductions

Welcome to Their Past Your Future Scotland.

This is an ‘interim’ website which aims to help TPYF Scotland projects, namely in collecting reminiscences from veterans (both military and civilian) and illustrating them with digitised images.

Building on the success of previous years, TPYF Scotland will bring young people and older generations in the local community together to capture unique oral histories that will concentrate on the Second World War and all subsequent conflicts.

The results from these oral history projects will form a series of some 300 on-line mini exhibitions or ‘vignettes’ – oral histories and associated illustrative exhibits from local and national collections. They may include diary extracts, newspaper articles, old photographs, archive film, all manner of old documents and paintings. Together they will create a vivid story of a person, event or place.

Their Past Your Future Scotland will culminate with the launch of a website in 2010.  The vignettes and related historic objects will be available as a classroom teaching aid via Learning and Teaching Scotland’s new Scottish schools’ intranet, Glow. This ensures these projects become a rich educational resource for teachers and a global legacy for young people and the wider community involved.

This is a fantastic opportunity to ensure that the memories and first-hand knowledge of war is never forgotten, enabling generations within communities to discover personal stories which have affected or involved their local area.

Culture Minister, Linda Fabiani, said: “I’d like to congratulate Museums Galleries Scotland on the continuation of this wonderful and significant project. Phase 2 of Their Past Your Future will again see young people and older folk working together in communities across Scotland to deliver a body of work which will be thought provoking as well as entertaining. Scotland’s older people have a mine of information, stories and experience to impart and it’s therefore heartening to know that some of it is being captured through projects such as this for the benefit and education of younger citizens and the wider community. With museums and galleries across Scotland set to showcase work from Their Past Your Future, I am really looking forward to the project’s ongoing success and securing its abiding and hugely important legacy."