WW1 Living History

A bit about our service..

We bring to WW1 trenches to your classroom.

WW1 Living History have aligned our frontline based incursions with the NSW Department of Education HSIE core study “Australians At War” and enables your faculty to tick off the syllabus site study requirement. Our display and discussions cover the average Australian soldiers experience in the trenches of The Western Front, France 1916 -1918.

Our visit to your school will include up to two sessions of up to two hours each. We believe an important part of engaging students is to allow them to have “ownership” of the sessions. To do this we allow them to choose what is discussed. Volunteers from the audience come forward to look through our items and pick something they wish to learn more about. After a discussion and some question time these items are then handed out through the cohort.

Our display includes a very close to full size picture of Australian diggers in a WW1 Western Front trench measuring 2.4 metres wide and 1.8 high, along with several large tables holding nearly one hundred genuine artefacts including weapons, tools, communication gear, food stuff, gas defence, hand weapons such as knives and clubs, first aid, headgear, clothing, personal kit as well as artillery and machine gun items (nothing dangerous, all items inert or blunt).

Our goal is not only to show students what the Great War diggers would have worn, carried, or used, but also to provide a human perspective to this part of history and hopefully build some empathy in the students. To do this we combine what we call “primary source driven story telling” and ”primary source hands-on learning”. The students will hear stories based on the first-hand accounts of these combat soldiers while they handle genuine items from the time period.