As the personal stories of the Second World War are fast fading from living memory, it is vital that these stories - and the wartime objects that often accompany them - are preserved for future generations. Their Finest Hour, a University of Oxford project launched in July 2022 and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, aims to empower local communities to digitally preserve these stories and objects before they are lost to posterity.
By helping local communities organise and run their own Digital Collection Days, where members of the public will bring along WW2-related stories, memories, photographs, diaries, letters and any other mementos to be digitised (i.e. photographed) and uploaded to an online archive for everyone to see and share. We will also work with other organisations to hold c. 15 large Digital Collection Days across the United Kingdom and Ireland.
