2015
AHRC & Connecting Communities festival 2015 - East Belfast and the Great War
Saturday 6th June saw Living Legacies 1914-18 visit East Belfast, for the third in our series of collaborative events with the successful East Belfast and the Great War research group. This particular event was also the first of the AHRC-sponsored, Connected Communities' festival, which runs throughout June. Other events which are part of the Festival can be found on our website.
Along with History Hub Ulster, 'Row on Row' and the Hounds of Ulster, the East Belfast Network Centre played host to a range of groups who each had an important and unique approach to commemorating and exploring the Great War.
Living Legacies 1914 were supported by the Digitisation Team (Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis) from Queen's University Belfast, and were kept busy throughout the day, as they digitally recorded over one hundred, original WW1 artefacts.
Each contributor had an interesting story to share, and we were delighted to be able to capture these, and preserve East Belfast's war stories.
One contributor, a relative of Private Alec Cairns, from Lisburn, who served in the 4th Canadian Infantry Battalion, brought along some of Alec's WW1 memorabilia, and shared his story with us. Alec is thought to have joined up as a young man, aged around 16 or 17, and is likely to have concealed his age in order to enlist. This is also thought to be the reason for his move from Lisburn to Canada.
The family believe that Alec was wounded in the Second Battle of Ypres, and died in a military hospital shortly afterwards, in 1915. He is buried in Boulogne's Eastern Cemetery and the family visited his grave for the 100th anniversary last year. Several items of Alec's were digitally captured, and will be available on our database shortly.
Along with the oral history and object sampling, Saturday's event featured two presentations on particular aspects of the war and its explorations, which were both well-attended. Historian Philip Orr gave a talk on 'The Shipyard and the Home Front during the First World War', which was particularly poignant with the two, infamous cranes visible through the windows. He presented some of the lesser-known narratives of East Belfast's volunteers, and argued that, for many, the training, travel and comradeship offered by the British Army was in sharp relief to the prospects offered elsewhere.
East Belfast and the Great War project coordinator, Jason Burke, then spoke to an interested audience about the group's work to date, including some of the research methods being used to gather and record the stories of the local people whose lives were affected by the Great War.
We were very impressed by the continued local interest in the war, and grateful to the AHRC for funding the event, and to the East Belfast team for allowing us to work with them on this timely endeavour.
Other events which are part of the Connection Communities' festival 2015 can be found on AHRC website.