Through My Eyes: Stories of Conflict, Belonging and Identity. © IWM

The Imperial War Museum (IWM) has launched a new online exhibition called Through My Eyes: Stories of Conflict, Belonging and Identity, as part of the national Their Past Your Future programme.

Featuring newly digitised photographs and personal testimonies available online for the first time, the exhibition illustrates the ways in which various twentieth century conflicts have made people rethink or reaffirm their own sense of identity.

Using recently filmed interviews and audio testimonies alongside photographs, documents, artwork and other items from the Imperial War Museum’s unique collections, the online exhibtion explores a wide variety of personal stories from different countries and conflicts.

"Through My Eyes continues the Imperial War Museum's aim to provide first-class interpretation of our collections, both through our physical exhibitions, and online,” said Dan Phillips, Deputy Director of the Imperial War Museum’s Their Past Your Future programme.

Partition of India. Crowds involved in the Calcutta Riot in 1946. © IWM

(Above) This photograph was taken by Captain Peter Farrant during his service with the York and Lancaster Regiment in India between 1945 and 1947.

Launched in 2004, Their Past Your Future is an innovative national learning programme funded by the Big Lottery Fund that uses historical sources, sites, museums, veterans and eyewitnesses of war to increase young people's understanding of history, commemoration, national identity and civic participation today.

The Through My Eyes website is the latest contribution to the scheme from the Imperial War Museum, who have been closely involved with Their Past Your Future since its inception.

“One of the key strengths of the museum lays in the insight into the impact of conflict that we, as an institution, are able to provide through the prism of personal testimony,” added Dan. “It is this ability to show the impact of large-scale events at the human level which continues to provide our visitors with an ease of engagement, and inform the collection, display and interpretation of our diverse holdings."

Among the moving stories that emerge from the website are those of Parkash Kaur and Ajit Singh, who moved to Britain after their families lost everything in the violence of India’s partition in 1947.

A group of Jamaican technicians, who had recently arrived in Britain, outside West India House in 1941. © IWM

A similar story of displacement emerges from Avtar Singh Mangat, who describes how his family moved from Nairobi, Kenya to India in the 1960s when the policy of Africanisation forced his father into retirement. Avtar came to Britain in 1967 and became a teacher, awarded an MBE for his services to education in 1999.

All of the personal stories are supported by historical overviews of the related conflicts, using archive material from the IWM collections to illustrate the specific context of these individual experiences.

The project is being launched in two phases. The first, which goes live in June 2008, includes stories from Windrush passengers, First World War volunteers, Kindertransport children, Basque evacuees, Displaced Persons from the Second World War, people affected by the Indian Partition and also those affected by the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya.

A second phase will be launched in autumn 2008 and will include the experiences of Vietnamese boat people, refugees from Bosnia, refugees from Kosovo and survivors of the Rwandan genocide.

The website features the real stories of people affected and displaced by conflict © IWM

As well as being a resource for visitors of all ages and backgrounds the new website is also designed to be an excellent new resource for schools, particularly as a resource for history, citizenship, geography and social studies. Stories are fully accessible and searchable through themes such as volunteers, refugees, children and observers, as well as by historical period.

Visit the website at
www.theirpast-yourfuture.org.uk/throughmyeyes