14-18 NOW

Based at IWM in London, '14-18 NOW' was the UK’s official arts programme for the First World War centenary (2014-18). Funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Arts Council England and the Art Fund, the '14-18 NOW' team worked with arts and heritage partners across the UK to commission new pieces from 420 contemporary artists, musicians, film makers, designers and performers. Thirty five million people – including eight million young people – engaged with the '14-18 NOW' programme, achieving reach and resonance at local, national and international levels. '14-18 NOW' projects included The Poppies ‘Wave’ and ‘Weeping Window’ touring sculptures by designer Tom Piper and artist Paul Cummins, along with Peter Jackson’s BAFTA-nominated film ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’. Released in 2018, this used original, digitally remastered and colourised footage from IWM’s extensive film archive. The final '14-18 NOW' project, ‘Pages of the Sea’, marked the one hundredth anniversary of the Armistice, and the end of the First World War. On 11 November 2018, film-maker Danny Boyle invited people from across the UK to gather on beaches and watch as portraits of war-time individuals were crafted into the sand before being washed away by the tide. The entire '14-18 NOW' programme produced thousands of digital and physical records, including photographs, films and administrative files. Catalogued between 2017 and 2020, these will be made available to researchers at IWM in due course.