Interesting project update- I was approached through work from the RAF100 team (a campaign to commemorate 100 years of the Royal Air Force) to digitise some archive images for a project that they were involved in. They then told me that they are supporting a project called Living Legacies 1914-1918. (http://www.livinglegacies1914-18.ac.uk/CommunityResources/CommunityProjects/DefenceHeritageproject/)
Which supports communities with information and expertise to explore the impacts of World War 1 and World War 2 on Britain and Ireland. The project partners with different organisations such as Queens University Belfast and Defence Heritage Project (and many more). I expressed my interest and similarities with my project to Living Legacies 1914-1918 and the RAF100 gave me the contacts to the team that are currently working on this.
I met most of the team at Queens University Belfast from the Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis/Living Legacies. Dr Heather Montgomery took me through the intent of the project and one of the aspects of this is to catalogue 28 airfield sites within Northern Ireland. Once they have this information it will be uploaded to the Defence Heritage website, and update their historical map of buildings/airfields. They plan to do this by creating an application targeted at Air Cadets/Schools so they can narratively and photographically go site-to-site and record their findings, which once verified these, will be added to the historical map. They were extremely helpful and have shared all their resources with me and have helped me inform my practice with the discussion of the importance of geo-tagging which till now I hadn’t thought about. Which I think will be an essential element to recording the site and adds an additional element to keep my practice technical and scientific. I also expressed if they needed imagery for the Living Legacies website I would be happy to provide as I would like to provide support to this excellent project.
I have also had an informal discussion about the possibilities of a link on the Living Legacies to my website and my project to supplement the research and information for the public to view. Additionally Dr Keith Lilley has expressed an interest of me accompanying him when he escorts Air Cadets to various sites. Dr Lilley will be helping the cadets in all aspects of geography and I would provide the cadets with photographic advice, again all informal so we will see. It’s all quite exciting and great to find people who share the same enthusiasm in documenting these sites and that we can share resources and information. Even though we might record with a different perspective, the outcome is still the same and that is to share and provide information on former airfield sites.
Critical Research Journal 