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UCL and the IOE mark the Armistice centenary
9 November 2018
On Sunday 11 November 2018, it will be one hundred years since the signing of the armistice that ended the First World War.
To mark this, staff and students from across UCL, and many of the students from partner schools will be honouring all those who fought in the Great War by taking part in national and local events and paying their respects privately.
A wreath will be laid at the UCL war memorial in the main Quad from Friday 9 November until Monday 19 November for staff and students to reflect in peace.
There will be also be wreaths laid and three ceremonies held by UCL Medical school staff and students at the UCH Medical School in the Rockefeller Building, the Middlesex Hospital Medical School and the Royal Free Medical School from 10:45 am on Friday 9 November. All are welcome to attend.
In a lunchtime lecture on Wednesday 13 November, Dr Georgina Brewis will talk about the significant impact of the First World War on life at UCL.
Dr Brewis will talk about how women formed a majority of the much-reduced student body, playing a leading role in College life. They set up UCL’s Voluntary Aid Detachment, which maintained an Ambulance Squad in St Pancras, London and sent students to nurse in military hospitals in France.
At the end of the war, the first government scholarship scheme for ex-service students helped produced a more socially diverse student body, while the fallen were commemorated around UCL’s campus.
Other Slade school members who experienced the War as artists, soldiers and civilians will be remembered in an Armistice pop-up exhibition at the UCL Art Museum from Friday 9 November. The artists include Stanley Spencer, Winifred Knights, David Bomberg and William Orpen.
UCL Special Collections have also been involved in remembrance events, developing a First World War education programme as part of the ‘Shrouds of the Somme’ art project.
On display at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the project stems from the work of artist Rob Heard who has spent the past five years hand-making more than 72,000 small shrouded figures representing the men killed in the bloodiest battle in British military history whose bodies were never recovered.
Since September, 18 educational workshops have been held in the neighbouring Olympic Park boroughs to help students investigate the Battle of the Somme, what it was and how and why we remember it.
Links
- UCL Lunch Hour Lecture on The Impact of the First World War on UCL
- First World War Centenary Battlefields Tour Programme
- Shrouds of the Somme
- Isaac Rosenberg: UCL Antenna
- Dr Georgina Brewis' research profile
- UCL Slade School of Fine Art
- UCL Art Museum
- UCL Special Collections
Image
John Cobb