IWM Blog

  • The We Can Do Better installation on Downhill House
    Blog: Arts and Culture

    We Can Do Better

    We Can Do Better was a takeover of Downhill House by the artist Joe Caslin in collaboration with a group of young women born after the Good Friday Agreement. Produced in Northern Ireland by the Nerve Centre, Caslin co-created the work with a group known as ‘The Kindred Collective’. The temporary, paper-based artwork stretched across the front of Downhill House and was designed in response to some of the issues affecting young people in Northern Ireland today. In this blog post, the collective explains how a nine-month process of engagement and co-creation led to a piece of work that reflected societal conflict, empowerment and change.
  • Black and white image of trees at night
    © Grzegorz Stefanski
    Blog: Arts and Culture

    locusts: a new IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund art commission

    Commissioned by the IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund in partnership with The Brickworks Museum, located in the village of Swanwick, Southampton, locusts brings together real-life testimonies from the local community about the Second World War and its aftermath within this part of England, whilst exploring the potential for individual and collective healing through processes of recollection and re-enactment. Joseph Constable shares his reflections on this powerful new film.
  • Nurse Elsie Sandy picking cosmos flowers outside the nurses' hostel in the grounds of the Colonial Hospital on St Vincent in March 1955.
    IWM (TR 7109)
    Blog: Objects

    Reading the West Indies: A Guide to finding Caribbean stories in our Library Collection

    A guide to locating Caribbean library resources in IWM London's Research Room, including how to search collections, book a Research Room appointment and a reading list.
  • British Royal Navy Sea King helicopter hovers above Rockall, as Navy and civilian team fight a gale to install navigation beacon.
    Image: IWM (A 35396)
    Blog: Technology and innovation

    Flight safety and you: Royal Navy Instructional films on flight safety

    Robert Rumble is the Project Curator for Lifesavers, a five-year project to explore how conflict has driven innovation in science and technology. Lifesavers is a collaboration between Imperial War Museums and Lloyd’s Register Foundation. Lifesavers is a project at Imperial War Museums, to discover the fascinating objects and stories relating to science and technology held in the museums’ collections. The project serves to improve global safety by learning from the past.
  • Landing Craft Tank (LCT) unloading a "Liberty" ship in Tripoli, Libya, February 1943.
    Image: IWM (A 16179)
    Blog: D-Day

    From Yards to Hards: Preparing Allied naval forces for the 1944 Normandy Landings

    Robert Rumble is the Project Curator for Lifesavers, a five-year project to explore how conflict has driven innovation in science and technology. Lifesavers is a collaboration between Imperial War Museums and Lloyd’s Register Foundation. Lifesavers is a project at Imperial War Museums, to discover the fascinating objects and stories relating to science and technology held in the museums’ collections. The project serves to improve global safety by learning from the past.
  • Acrobats in black outfits build a human pyramid, standing on each other's shoulders
    After the Rain, Compagnie XY. Photo © Joseph Gerard Photography.
    Blog: Arts and Culture

    After the Rain

    Part of the IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund in partnership with Ulster University, 'After the Rain' was the culmination of over a years long engagement in Derry-Londonderry by the world renowned contemporary French circus troupe Compagnie XY. Rachel Melaugh, Creative Director of In Your Space Circus and producer for this project shares her reflections.
  • Old box containing many embroidered handkerchiefs
    © Lee Karen Stow
    Blog: First World War

    Unfolding Hankies

    In this guest blog post, Dr Lee Karen Stow shares insights into her new project. Unfolding her maternal grandmother Olive May Bertholini’s hankies, she also unfolds her story of war and, perhaps, of love. Hidden within these squares of delicate cotton and silk, and striped gents hankies, are memories and clues to what she and others went through during the two world wars.
  • HMS Belfast leaving Scapa Flow for the Normandy beaches in June 1944. The cruiser is reported to have fired some of the first shots on D-Day.
    © IWM (A 25665)
    Blog: D-Day

    From Yards to Hards: Preparing Allied naval forces for the 1944 Normandy Landings

    Exploring the Second World War innovations that made D-Day possible.
  • Naval officer cadets learn how to operate Asdic sound locator equipment during instruction in anti-submarine warfare at Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth in 1959.
    © IWM (TR 9577)
    Blog

    Lifesavers: How conflict innovation can build a better world

    Lifesavers is a project at Imperial War Museums, to discover the fascinating objects and stories relating to science and technology held in the museums’ collections. Generously sponsored by Lloyd’s Register Foundation, Lifesavers aims to discover how conflict has accelerated innovation, and how this has impacted on the world we live in today.
  • Image of cut out sculptures of buildings casting shadows on wall
    Somewhere to Stay, Diana Forster. Photo © Ed Broughton
    Blog: Arts and Culture

    Somewhere to Stay

    Part of the IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund, 'Somewhere to Stay' tells the story of Anna Sokulska Forster, the artist's mother, who was deported from her family home in eastern Poland (now Ukraine) and transported to a Soviet labour camp in Arkhangelsk. This was the start of a long journey of survival and ongoing displacement that would see her travel thousands of miles, from Arkhangelsk, to Uzbekistan, Iran, Tanzania, and finally the UK.
  • (Left) Portrait of Mabel Wulff, nee Phillips; (Right) Mabel and her husband Max Wulff
    Courtesy of Eddie Wulff and family
    Blog: First World War

    Two countries, two wars: the story of Mabel Wulff, BEM

    Research has been undertaken into the story of Mabel Wulff, who born in Newport in Wales but lived for many years in Germany. In this blog post, Madeleine Resühr and Andrew Hemmings share details of Mabel's extraordinary life, which spanned the two world wars and beyond.
  • Title screen for Sunken Warships: Secrets from the Deep
    Blog: Film

    The Joy of the Archive Jigsaw

    Jason Davidson, producer/director and co-owner of the award winning production company Squeaky Pedal, shares his reflections on exploring the IWM film archive for a new TV series entitled Sunken Warships: Secrets from the Deep.