Commemorating WWI: Conflict and Creativity

Commemorating World War One: Conflict and Creativity is a public engagement project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to design and deliver events to commemorate the First World War centenary.

The project is co-ordinated by Cardiff University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Opera and Drama (CIRO), co-directed by Dr Clair Rowden, School of Music, and Dr Monika Hennemann, School of Modern Languages, and supported by Dr Rachelle Barlow, a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School of Music.

The project connects a broad range of relevant research from across Cardiff University, including Welsh identity in the Battle of Mametz Wood (Dr Toby Thacker, School of History, Archaeology and Religion), anti-German propaganda in music (Dr Monika Hennemann), Portuguese theatre of war (Dr Rhian Atkin, School of Modern Languages), Welsh-language poetry from Grangetown (Dr Dylan Foster Evans, School of Welsh), political opposition to the Great War (Aled Eirug, School of History, Archaeology and Religion), Sospan Fach during World War One (Professor Sioned Davies, Head of School of Welsh), propaganda (Dr John Jewell, School of Journalism, Media and Culture) and the WWI songs of Ivor Novello and Clara Novello Davies (Dr Rachelle Barlow).

The project will strengthen links with external partners in Cardiff by organising a public study day (21 May 2016) in collaboration with Welsh National Opera and a series of lunchtime lectures at National Museum Cardiff. Building upon Cardiff University’s new strategic partnership with Leuven University, a two-day international public symposium (11-12 November 2016) on musical and artistic creation in Europe and the US during WWI will bring together academics, world-class performers, secondary school children and the general public. With the additional participation of the University of Heidelberg and Brown University, this event will engage with the memorialisation of WWI from a wider perspective.

By engaging with the wider civic environment on the theme of conflict and creativity, the project will investigate how both war and the commemoration of war is enacted in music, in prose, in verse, and in visual images.

All images reproduced by permission of Special Collections and Archives, Cardiff University. They were sketched by Muirhead Bone (1876-1953) who was appointed as Britain’s first official war artist in 1916.