Flora’s War 1914-1918

We will work with young people to explore and articulate through a range of traditional and social media the impact that the outbreak of the First World War had upon the Isle of Sheppey and young people of the time.
Recognising its strategic position between London and Europe, the 1914 government strengthened & fortified all the services on this
“ Barbed Wire Island”.

We will map the changes which occurred on the Island due to the massive influx of Navy, Army and Airforce personnel onto Sheppey and people’s reactions to this through the eyes of actual young people who were alive at the time such as Flora, a seventeen year old cook in a Sheerness seaside house in Marine Parade.

We will explore their activities and interests, how they work, life at school and how they play as well as what they think of this very different world & the households in which they live. We will involve local historians, use census information and archive articles in local newspapers and museums to research the everyday life of the young people and their families one hundred years ago but employ modern technology and today’s social media to record their impressions.