The University is a partner, together with the Lincolnshire Bomber Command Memorial Trust, in the realisation of the new International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln. The Centre will be home to a memorial spire and wall of names of those who were killed in action during World War 2; a memorial garden; and an interpretation/visitor centre that will bring the story of Bomber Command to life. The University’s role is to set up and populate an ambitious digital archive, whose collection will provide all the material for display in the interpretation centre. This collection will also be an unmatched resource for research. The archive will consist of oral histories of those who served as well as those who suffered in the bombing war and who were involved in reconstruction after the war; and of scanned copies of personal documents, memorabilia and photos. We will also be working with large organisations such as the Imperial War Museum and the National Archives to digitise paper records. Students across a number of awards in the University, such as Tourism, Events, Exhibition Design, Journalism, PR, Marketing and Social Computing, will have the opportunity to work on this live project as it unfolds. The spire will be erected by mid-2014 and the interpretation centre will follow thereafter. Prof Heather Hughes, whose research looks at difficult/dissonant heritage and who is based in the Tourism Subject Group, is leading the digital archive project and coordinating all the university’s efforts towards this enormous project.
Students to work on International Bomber Command Centre
