Lest We Forget is a University of Oxford initiative working with schools and community groups who want to run their own community collection events, digitising and sharing WW1 memorabilia and stories. It was launched in 2017 after a successful crowdfunding campaign. With additional funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the project was then extended to run until June 2019, jointly led by the University of Oxford and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
The project has initiated and supported a large number of collection events. The main focus has been to engage and support community groups and schools, allowing them to run their own events. The project has created documentation and guides, provided training and been available to offer advice and answer questions, but it is the local groups who have planned and run the events and collected the material. Digitised objects and stories have been uploaded to a shared platform, hosted by the University of Oxford. The project has brought together several hundreds of contributions, many featuring large number of digital images of letters, photos, objects and more. The archive can be accessed for free and the material can be viewed and used. All the collected material will also be deposited with Europeana, to form part of the large, international collection hosted there.
Some examples of the stories and objects you can find in the collection – all available online at http://lwf.it.ox.ac.uk/
To learn more about Lest We Forget, please follow the links listed here:
- Lest We Forget website
- Online archive – collected objects and stories
- Digital Collection Day training pack
- List of events
- Europeana 1914-1918 – large, international archive of objects and stories