After 26 won the ‘Writing for Design’ award for Armistice 100 Days at the Drum Design Awards we met up with Liz Robertson from our partner organisation Imperial War Museums.
Liz had played a leading role in working with us to make the whole project a success. So we began by asking, six months after Armistice Day 2018, what were IWM’s feelings about the project now.
“We’re very pleased and proud. We didn’t know how it would turn out, not having done anything like this before. It was taking us into relatively unfamiliar literary territory, and there were also the nuts and bolts – how would it all work? We had to learn to let go; just let go and see what comes back.”
“It was interesting to do that and interesting to trust that we would get great stories in return.”
Did it live up to expectations?
“It exceeded them – the sheer variety and quality of the work. And the work your group put in was exceptional – the visual aspects in the book and online, the writing, research, organisation – above all the enthusiasm.”
In what ways did it surprise you?
“The stories always surprised, in their breadth and depth. The Twitter Q&As worked really well, and the involvement with other partners. Each story revealed something new – I particularly remember the centena by John Burwell and his research story about American street names. It told me something completely new.”
Your personal highlight?
“Lucy Furlong performing her centena in full suffragette costume in the gardens outside the museum and shouting ‘Votes for women!’ so loudly that it made the sound recordist jump. Those films brought the centenas to life. And I still love the quirky way we started with Angus Grundy’s story of the Archduke’s chauffeur whose wrong turn started the whole tragedy. With a poignant, appropriate ending with Faye Sharpe’s last post to the Unknown Warrior.”
Our thanks to Liz and the IWM team. 26 projects depend on close working with partners – we certainly had an extremely supportive partner on this outstanding project.
IWM is now in the process of creating a permanent digital archive for the Armistice 100 Days project and we’ll be able to share more details of that later this year. In the meantime you can still read all 100 centenas at our website and copies of the book are still available to buy via the 26 bookshop.
– Lisa Andrews