Old Swan Women's World War One - Commemoration Then and Now

This project is a community-led commemoration of the lives of women in the ‘Old Swan’ area of Liverpool who lived through World War One. Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the project operates from The Joseph Lappin Centre. We are using oral histories, memory cafes, art, films, photography and people’s photos and other artefacts as a means of capturing untold stories and hidden histories of ordinary women in the L13 'Old Swan' area. By uncovering the stories of ordinary local women and their experiences of the conflict, we hope to understand how women’s lives changed dramatically during this period, through examining family & home-life, education, work and social lives. The project additionally offers an opportunity to compare and contrast women’s lives as experienced today, through talking with war-time descendants who are participating in the project. Our project website is a growing repository of collected stories, which we hope to keep developing in the future.