National Memorial Arboretum Exhibition Unveiling
Photography by Raj Gedhu
The National Memorial Arboretum, in Staffordshire, is a place dedicated to remembering the Armed Forces. After months of researching, educational trips and discussions we were happy to finally unveil our exhibition to the students, families and community members that attended. I would like to thank Chris and all the team at National Memorial Arboretum for making this possible and being so generous with offering us more space that we had thought possible.
We started the morning attending a remembrance service at the Sikh Memorial, hosted by Captain Sohal. At 11am there was a two minute silence which we all held and then gave the members either a Poppy or a small token to lay at the memorial statue. After the service we headed to the newly built Aspects conference centre where we would unveil the exhibition. At the unveiling we had students speak to the audience of what this project has taught them and why they wanted to be involved. It was wonderful to hear that we had made a difference in informing them of histories that they did not know about. Two of the students spoke about how this project equipped them with skills required to create an exhibition and first hand knowledge of everything it takes to create a community project tackling sensitive issues.
While having access to images and handling artefacts, the students discussed being involved in a project where they were learning skills that they had not ever thought of. Ms Humphries discussed how they were given opportunities that once were not possible or available to them, never had the students thought that they would get to visit a museum that once catered to the injured Indian Soldiers. Coming from the communities that they live, these young people are often isolated and the chance of bringing all the young people from different communities together has created discussion and opportunities that would otherwise not been possible.
Having our exhibition opening at the National Memorial Arboretum was important as we wanted to give the young people and their families a chance to visit a place that they didn’t know existed. Once we unveiled our exhibition, it was a chance for everyone to see all the hard work myself and Paula Kitching (our historian/researcher/writer) did in order to ensure our exhibition reflected not just the past but also the present society we are living in. Paula discussed how the writing process for the exhibition was about the stories we don’t hear. Often the stories of the winners of awards get mentioned and celebrated but what about the other men that also contributed. The stories that we had featured in our exhibition and in our information booklet focused on matters that were important today such as identity and education and women wanting better lives for themselves.
The exhibition was a success and the room was packed of people that had worked hard on such an amazing exhibition. The families and students got to learn so much through our exhibition and along with that, we had exhibition boards were the wreaths made by the community volunteers and the art work by the various of other students that we never got a chance to include in the exhibition.
