Their Past Your Future, Museum of London and touring all over the UK
'Oh, what a dull war exhibition' pretty much sums up Their Past Your Future, the flatpack exhibition now concurrently touring 70 UK towns and cities to mark the end of the second world war 60 years ago.
The exhibition is the product of the combined forces of several museum organisations led by the Imperial War Museum (IWM). This is not their finest hour.
The exhibition is only one part of the larger-scale education project that constitutes Their Past Your Future, which is itself one of three strands in Veterans Reunited, a programme that reaches back to the war to consider present-day questions about citizenship, conflict and social change.
Their Past… describes itself as 'the first exhibition of this scale to use pioneering education techniques' - which includes inviting children to pick their favourite image and asking, 'Have you seen one of these?' alongside a drawing of a pill-box. If this is pioneering, then someone has spent the past 60 years in a museum bunker.
The exhibition is a small pavilion constructed nicely from scaffolding poles and canvas-coloured fabric. I saw a version (there are nine regional versions in total), in the foyer of the Museum of London.
I fear how they will fare when they hit the beaches of major shopping centres. I suspect that the lure of designer bargains may prove greater than the appeal of this 'celebration'. It didn't seem to attract much passing trade in the museum.
Decorating the outside is a timeline of the conflict, split into various parts such as world and UK events. Inside there are a number of mainly monochrome images and accompanying texts - diaries, poems included - presented in PVC hangings with pockets. The effect is neat and tidy, if nothing to write home about.
The display includes the life stories of several veterans, male and female. The selection is rather good. The most interesting is Johnny Smythe's eventful life: a black African, born in Sierra Leone, he volunteered for the Royal Air Force and survived a crash landing and years as a prisoner of war.
After the war he sailed on the Empire Windrush. But 60 years on, it's sad that there isn't room for just one German's story. The exhibition includes short films playing on a large, flat-screen monitor, but the soundtrack wasn't on at the museum (because nearby there were Pathé newsreels showing) so I couldn't tell whether a spot of Glenn Miller or Dame Vera Lynn adds a period feel that the exhibition lacks.
Most museums have a surplus of gas masks and tin hats, but wartime objects are strangely absent here. Instead, we get things such as a pair of glasses and a hammer and gavel. The spectacles are there to say, 'if they didn't fight, we'd have no National Health Service', presumably. But the pair isn't even NHS-style, let alone old. And the gavel is supposed to do justice to the Nuremberg war crimes trial...
It's as if someone at HQ ordered something lightweight and got it, in every sense of the word. Their Past Your Future is a year-long £10m programme of events including online learning resources, digitisation of IWM collections and a partnership scheme between young people and veterans across the UK.
I just hope that these outreach programmes hold more significance for a generation now so far removed from the events of 1945.
Caroline Worthington is the curator of art at York Museums Trust
Project data
Cost: £59,000 for each of the nine versions of the exhibition, excluding the touring costs
Funder: Big Lottery Fund
Structure design: Land
Design: thomas.matthews
Venues: Abbey Pumping Station, Leicester (to 15 October); Holocaust Centre, Newark, Nottinghamshire (20 October-4 January 2006)
Exhibition ends: March 2006
'Oh, what a dull war exhibition' pretty much sums up Their Past Your Future, the flatpack exhibition now concurrently touring 70 UK towns and cities to mark the end of the second world war 60 years ago.
The exhibition is the product of the combined forces of several museum organisations led by the Imperial War Museum (IWM). This is not their finest hour.
The exhibition is only one part of the larger-scale education project that constitutes Their Past Your Future, which is itself one of three strands in Veterans Reunited, a programme that reaches back to the war to consider present-day questions about citizenship, conflict and social change.
Their Past… describes itself as 'the first exhibition of this scale to use pioneering education techniques' - which includes inviting children to pick their favourite image and asking, 'Have you seen one of these?' alongside a drawing of a pill-box. If this is pioneering, then someone has spent the past 60 years in a museum bunker.
The exhibition is a small pavilion constructed nicely from scaffolding poles and canvas-coloured fabric. I saw a version (there are nine regional versions in total), in the foyer of the Museum of London.
I fear how they will fare when they hit the beaches of major shopping centres. I suspect that the lure of designer bargains may prove greater than the appeal of this 'celebration'. It didn't seem to attract much passing trade in the museum.
Decorating the outside is a timeline of the conflict, split into various parts such as world and UK events. Inside there are a number of mainly monochrome images and accompanying texts - diaries, poems included - presented in PVC hangings with pockets. The effect is neat and tidy, if nothing to write home about.
The display includes the life stories of several veterans, male and female. The selection is rather good. The most interesting is Johnny Smythe's eventful life: a black African, born in Sierra Leone, he volunteered for the Royal Air Force and survived a crash landing and years as a prisoner of war.
After the war he sailed on the Empire Windrush. But 60 years on, it's sad that there isn't room for just one German's story. The exhibition includes short films playing on a large, flat-screen monitor, but the soundtrack wasn't on at the museum (because nearby there were Pathé newsreels showing) so I couldn't tell whether a spot of Glenn Miller or Dame Vera Lynn adds a period feel that the exhibition lacks.
Most museums have a surplus of gas masks and tin hats, but wartime objects are strangely absent here. Instead, we get things such as a pair of glasses and a hammer and gavel. The spectacles are there to say, 'if they didn't fight, we'd have no National Health Service', presumably. But the pair isn't even NHS-style, let alone old. And the gavel is supposed to do justice to the Nuremberg war crimes trial...
It's as if someone at HQ ordered something lightweight and got it, in every sense of the word. Their Past Your Future is a year-long £10m programme of events including online learning resources, digitisation of IWM collections and a partnership scheme between young people and veterans across the UK.
I just hope that these outreach programmes hold more significance for a generation now so far removed from the events of 1945.
Caroline Worthington is the curator of art at York Museums Trust
Project data
Cost: £59,000 for each of the nine versions of the exhibition, excluding the touring costs
Funder: Big Lottery Fund
Structure design: Land
Design: thomas.matthews
Venues: Abbey Pumping Station, Leicester (to 15 October); Holocaust Centre, Newark, Nottinghamshire (20 October-4 January 2006)
Exhibition ends: March 2006
