Education at Wimbledon Museum

Life in WW2 Wimbledon:

The Home Front Would you stay or go? 23rd March 2023

I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Jean Shipton in facilitating the Pelham School Year 4 children’s activities and to offer some suggestions on the crafting part of it. In addition to that, it was very exciting to hear that the outcome of this workshop would be displayed in the museum. As far as I know, this would be for the museum

the first time to exhibit children’s crafts in a professional way.

The group, including teachers, some parents and 23 children joined us at the museum to learn more about Wimbledon in the second World War. Jean instead of jumping directly to the open-ended question,

she cleverly used the story of the evacuees as an introduction to the workshop.

After sharing the story, for the first time, the topic of the day was questioned: Life in WW2 Wimbledon – The Home Front Would you stay or go? Everyone was invited to take the initial response.

What I found intriguing was the use of existing archives and documents from either museum collections or personal and family archives, such as

Red Teddy, photographs, and WW2 Medals, for people to learn, touch, ask questions and interact.

‘Close your eyes and let’s imagine you are going back in time, back in time to 80 years ago. You are at home, it is night time, it is quiet and you decide to go out into the street…’

Jean read out loud.

The exercise was guided for participants to get familiar with the space and time to imagine the described scenarios.

The climax of the day definitely was when we met Norman Plastow, aged 15 during the Blitz.

Norman experienced the V1 rocket attack on Pelham School, showing the students the shrapnel that fell at his feet.

It was when the groups started reading the Wimbledon bomb map designed by Norman that somewhat the answer to the topic whether to stay or to leave as an evacuee changed, especially when some of the parents found out their houses were actually hit by the bombs during the war.

In response to the Defence medal in a contemporary way, the craft-making activity proposed,

What is your ‘hope medal’? & What do you want to keep safe?

Each student designed and made a medal, illustrating things that they love and value in Wimbledon and their childhood that should be protected for future generations.

During the reflection time after hope medal making activity, the same question ‘Would you stay or go?’ was raised again.

Overall, the feedback of the workshop was positive. Jean has proved that the way to make a workshop have much impact is

I believe this well-structured workshop was not only meaningful to the children, but also to the teachers, parents and volunteers who came along to learn more about Wimbledon through the lens of history.

In fact, I was not familiar with the history of WW2. I’m glad that because of this workshop, I was able to experience something that I had never experienced in history classes when I was a student.