This Happens in War - Their Past Your Future

The Museum of The Black Watch is leading a project titled This Happens in War, as part of the National initiative Their Past Your Future.

Through This Happens In War, the Museum of The Black Watch has organised a series of events in order to gather and record personal histories from members of this legendary regiment. Stories from local veterans who served during World War II and subsequent conflicts will illustrate many facets of the Regiment’s experiences.

The Museum was involved in training young people in the art of collecting oral histories with their project partner, YMCA Perth. The YMCA is keen to collaborate and promote local Black Watch veterans as role models to the young people with which it works.

The culmination of the project will be an exhibition, titled This Happens in War, to be shown throughout the Regimental area. The exhibition will be on tour from November 2009.  For more information, see elsewhere on this site.

It is hoped that these will all create a unique history of a regiment that served the Crown for over 266 and continues to serve as The Black Watch, 3rd Battalion, and The Royal Regiment of Scotland.

Commenting on the initiative, Emma Halford-MacLeod, Collections Coordinator, said: "The Museum of The Black Watch is excited to be leading the Their Past Your Future Scotland Phase 2 project in Tayside and Fife. It gives us a great opportunity to build on work already being undertaken by staff and volunteers and to develop new partnerships within the Regimental area. We're particularly excited to be working with the YMCA Perth - the involvement of young people in the project will ensure it has a profound impact across a broad section of society. The title, "This Happens In War", sums up our aim - to investigate the impact of conflicts from the Second World War to the present, in both wartime, peace-keeping and peace-enforcement operations."

Their Past Your Future Scotland is a fantastic opportunity to ensure that the memories of war are never forgotten, enabling generations within communities to discover personal stories which have affected or involved their local area.

Building on the success of previous years, TPYF Scotland will bring young people and older generations in the local community together to capture unique oral histories that will concentrate on the Second World War and all subsequent conflicts.

The results from these oral history projects will form a series of some 300 on-line mini exhibitions or ‘vignettes’ – oral histories and associated illustrative exhibits from local and national collections. They may include diary extracts, newspaper articles, old photographs, archive film, all manner of old documents and paintings. Together they will create a vivid story of a person, event or place.

Their Past Your Future Scotland will culminate with the launch of a website in 2010.  The vignettes and related historic objects will be available as a classroom teaching aid via Learning and Teaching Scotland’s new Scottish schools’ intranet, Glow. This ensures these projects become a rich educational resource for teachers and a global legacy for young people and the wider community involved.

For more information see the Their Past Your Future Scotland website.