Today the pupils and older people got together at Longhill school. The young people and older people worked together in small groups to write a letter from different points of view - as an evacuee, from a sister to her brother who's been called up and to a loved one who's away serving in the forces. All the letters were based on the characters in the game and/or the older people's personal experiences. It was a really focussed and sometimes moving exercise. The letters will be used in the game. We discussed the kind of censorship that may have taken place with some of the letter sent to men serving in the war. We recorded the older people reading the letters out and decided that we will censor some of the letters but use a voice over that reads the whole letter to show what kind of material may have been censored. One of the young people and one of the older people worked together to create a radio broadcast based on Churchill famous "we will fight them on the beaches speech. Through the process of working on these tasks many interesting conversations occurred around a variety of subjects to do with language, relationships, class/social differences etc. As well as many new interesting anecdotes - in particular Rod's story about his friend spilling gravy down the back of Churchill's neck!
Friday, 10 June 2011
Saturday, 28 May 2011
DAy 9: MASS OBSERVATION ARCHIVE
Today (Friday 27th) the students from Longhill visited the Mass Observation Archive to further research material and gather/scan images that will be used within the game.
An intense and hight productive day - the pupils found and scanned about 180 images for us to make use of!
Friday, 20 May 2011
DAY 8: BRIGHTON MUSEUM AND BRIGHTON HISTORY CENTRE
Today the older people and pupils from Longhill met at Brighton Museum. We went to the Brighton History centre in the museum first and following an introduction by Paul Jordan the group had the opportunity to explore materials related to WW2 local history. This led to further conversations between the pupils and older people - many new fascinating anecdotes and memories stirred up through looking at local papers, cinema pamphlets, diaries etc. This was followed by a great session in the education room with Karen Antoni who dressed up as a land girl, played the air raid siren sound as we entered the room and 1940's music as we worked through the activites she had prepared. The had group the opportunity to handle original objects (gas mask, warden helmets, ration books etc). Four tables had a collection of objects on them and the group had to look at the object and guess the identity of the person that the objects related to. The experience at the Museum combined with the real memories and reflections of the older people really brought the history of WW2 alive. Check out the slide show as a record of the day!
Monday, 16 May 2011
DAY 7 - Archive Edit and Oral Histories
Today we all met back after the Easter break to begin our final phase of the project. Todays session involved only the pupils from Longhill. Between now and July we will be generating the content for the virtual world: Lives at War. So we must create all the material (films, slideshows, audio) for all the objects that can be clicked on as well as the content triggered by the characters that are interacted with. Firstly we looked at the Beta version of the game. Everyone had a chance to explore the world created so far. The participants were really happy to see the avatars that they helped create and had lots of questions, responses and ideas which we will pass on to Corporation Pop. Hannah was also there to answer all their technical questions and help with the editing later (thanks Hannah!) The rest of the day was spent working in small groups making connection between the archive footage and the stories and memories recorded with the older people to create short video sequences with some fantastic results.