Have you got a Second World War memory you would like to share? Any wartime era photographs with a Manx connection?
Or perhaps you have artefacts relating to the Island's internment camps, or wartime in general, that you would like to know more about?
If your answer to any of those questions is 'yes', the Manx Museum’s curators and archivists would like you to get involved with their forthcoming Wartime Memories community day on Saturday 24th April.
The aim of the day is to build up a picture of the national memory of our Island at War. The Museum’s curators and archivists would like you to bring your objects, photographs and stories to the Museum between 10am - 2pm so they can scan, photograph and record your objects and discuss your memories.
There will also be an opportunity to see wartime archives and images in the Museum library.
Visitors to the Museum will be able to look at, explore and touch wartime-related objects from the Museum’s Education collection.
‘Touch! Object Handling with Wartime Artefacts’ will be running in the Art Gallery between 10 – 2pm and visitors to the Museum will be able to handle some wartime items from the Museum’s education collections and learn how they would have been used.
Museum curators would love to hear your stories about using these objects. There will also be an opportunity to see wartime objects that are not on permanent display.
Between 2 - 4pm the Museum’s Social History Curators will be delivering two free public lectures.
To mark the 70th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuations, the first lecture will explore the important role the Isle of Man and the Steam Packet played during the evacuations.
The second lecture will mark the 70th anniversary of the first WW2 internment camps opening on the Island (May 1940) and outline the history of civilian internment during the Second World War on the Isle of Man.
Katie King, Community Outreach & Learning Support Officer, said, "We hope that the community event day will be an opportunity for all ages to discover more about what the Island was like during the Second World War and to see the variety of material we have in the museum’s collections.
"We are really looking forward to talking to some of our older visitors about their memories of life on the Isle of Man during wartime. Objects are wonderful things and they truly come alive when you have people’s memories of how and where they were used and what they meant to people."
Admission to all the activities and lectures are free. The event has been planned to complement the ‘Forced Journey’s’ exhibition of internee and refugee art currently being exhibited at the Sayle Gallery.
Activity Timetable for Saturday 24th April
10:00am – 2:00pm: Touch! Object Handling with Wartime Artefacts in the Manx Museum Art Gallery
10:00am – 2:00pm: Wartime Memories in the Manx Museum Art Gallery
2:00pm – 3:00pm: The Isle of Man Steam Packet Company & Dunkirk. Lecture Theatre.
3:00pm- 4:00pm: Civilian Internment on the Isle of Man. Lecture Theatre.
Pictured: Manx Women's Land Army Girls.
