Impact case study database

Working with the National Trust in the Lake District to commemorate the end of WW1

Westaway’s research [2] has had a significant impact on the policy and practices of the NT in the Lake District, underpinning the NTs plans to commemorate the centenary of WW1 in the Lake District, The Great Gift Project. Westaway’s research on the donation of the mountain summits of Scafell Pike and Great Gable to the NT as war memorials in 1919 and 1923 respectively, inspired senior managers in the NT in the Lake District to address this legacy in their commemorative programme for 2018. Marian Sylvester, General manager of the NT’s West Lakes estate said: ‘your paper, Mountains of Memory, Landscapes of Loss, was very influential for the Great Gift team, as we developed our thoughts and ideas around how to commemorate the centenary of the end of the First World War…. While looking for further information about Scafell Pike, I came across your paper, and the way you described the Leconfield gift, and powerfully, the FRCC gift, and the wider meaning of the memorial landscapes, had an emotional impact on me and made me feel more determined that this was a story which we wanted to share more widely. I shared your paper with colleagues, and they too felt that we had a duty and a responsibility to share the story.’ [A]

In 2018 The Great Gift Project led to: the rebuilding of the summit cairn and war memorial plaque on Scafell Pike by NT rangers [B]; the lighting of an Armistice beacon on 11 November 2018 by NT rangers [C]; the commissioning of further research by the NT into the history of the land-donation war memorials in the Lake District. The project led to an exhibition Where Poppies Blow, the British Soldier, Nature and the Great War at Wordsworth House, Cockermouth [D] that had 28,485 visitors and drew in ‘broader audiences as well as our usual NT members….Staff and volunteers verbally reported that feedback from visitors was very emotional….and resonated with them’ [E]. Other impacts included improved interpretive signage on the NT’s Wasdale estate and an Arts Council funded commission resulting in the creation of a community choir, The Fellowship of Hill, and Wind, and Sunshine, who were commissioned to sing and record a suite of songs on ten of the summits donated as war memorials in the Lake District [F]. New songs were commissioned from the choir’s director, Dr. David Camlin. In the video of the choir made by the NT, choir member Keith Fitton gave his testimony of what the choir meant to him: ‘for me is about a number of things, first of all its about celebrating the fact that these fells are in public ownership, that we do have the right to roam over them and that’s not to be taken for granted. But it’s also about remembrance, it’s also about remembering that this was part of The Great Gift which was given to the nation by the Fell and Rock Climbing Club. It was a real act of total generosity from the heart, and so the project for me is about keeping that in mind, particularly as we are coming up to a hundred years from the Armistice.’ [F] In the video, Jessie Binns, Visitor Experience Officer, National Trust, talks about undertaking research into NT history and coming across the speech given at the dedication of Great Gable to the NT in 1923, reproduced by Westaway in [2]. Binns records: ‘I had never even heard of mountains being given as war memorials, it was completely unknown to me and that speech, reading it, the hairs just stood up on the back of my neck. After the First World War, there was so much grief and there was so much hardship, but for people to club together and to have that greatness of spirit, to buy these mountains and then gift them to the nation, it’s just an incredibly visionary act.’ [F] Subsequent research undertaken with the participants in the Fellowship choir ‘confirmed an expected perception of the social bonding effect of group singing, highlighting affordances for interpersonal attunement and attachment alongside a powerful individual sense of feeling ‘uplifted’’. The research concluded that ‘group singing might be taken….as a potent form of ‘healthy public’, creating an ‘ideal’ community, which participants can subsequently mobilise as a positive resource for everyday life’ [G].

Westaway worked with NT managers to organize a session on the first Sunday after the centenary of Armistice Day at the Kendal Mountain Festival 2018 called The Great Gift of Freedom with Sir Chris Bonington, bringing the story of the Lake District land-donation war memorials to a wide constituency of outdoor enthusiasts (audience 278) [H]. The session was opened by Westaway who provided a historical introduction to the Lake District land-donation war memorials and also featured interviews with NT staff and members of the Fell and Rock Climbing Club (FRCC), as well as performances by the Fellowship Choir [I]. In an email to Westaway, Paul Scully, Festival Manager said : 'The Great Gift’ was a wonderful event. A week after Armistice day it was a brilliant way to mark the centenary. After initial meetings with the National Trust I learned that all the events during year which included the Sca fell cairn rebuilding and the exhibition at Keswick museum were all created from your original paper on the Great Gift a few years back. It was brilliant to introduce you to the National Trust team and subsequently working and speaking on the session. Your work on this was hugely valuable’. [J]

The research enabled the NT to link contemporary needs for maintenance and repair of their mountain estates with a wider understanding of the heritage of these memorial landscapes. The Great Gift Project enabled the NT to effectively commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War, bringing a little-known story to a mass audience via events and NT publications, featuring on the front cover of the Autumn 2018 NT magazine. It helped drive fundraising campaigns with partners like Fix the Fells and the British Mountaineering Council’s Mend Our Mountains and it contributed to the wider public understanding of the legacy of the high fells of the Lake District as sacred and storied places, reinforcing a sense of identity and a commitment to landscape preservation amongst stakeholders. [A]

Working with the mountaineering community to understand, interpret and share mountaineering and expeditionary heritage

Westaway’s archival and oral-history research [6] has underpinned a free exhibition of mountaineering photography from the German 1929 Kanchenjunga expedition, entitled Mountain of Destiny: Kanchenjunga 1929, which ran from 15 Nov 2018 to 11 Jan 2019 at the Heaton Cooper Studio in Grasmere, Cumbria. The photographs were uncovered as part of Westaway’s research and the exhibition was the first time they have been seen in public in the UK. The exhibition was part of the arts programme of the Kendal Mountain Festival 2018, the largest mountain film and culture festival in the world. During November and December, the Heaton Cooper Studio recorded 10,395 visitors [K]. Archival photographs were juxtaposed with contemporary paintings of Kanchenjunga by Britain’s foremost painter of mountain landscapes, Julian Cooper. The exhibition stimulated other forms of cultural production. The Lake District artist and rock climber Joan Prickett noted that the ‘exhibition has inspired me to make work based on one of the photos’, an oil painting of two Sherpas [L]. The location of the exhibition was significant. The Lake District was the birthplace of rock climbing in England and Grasmere sits at the heart of the UNESCO recognized world heritage site. Grasmere receives a huge number of tourists and visitors and is centrally accessible to the climbing and mountaineering community in the Lake District and the wider region. Henry Iddon, Arts and Culture Officer at the Kendal Mountain Festival noted the impact on cultural tourism, saying: ‘ The exhibition ‘Mountain of Destiny - Kanchenjunga 1929’ at Heaton Cooper Studio allows the festival to reach out to an audience that may not visit Kendal over the main festival weekend. For KMF to have a footprint beyond Kendal itself is important, as is the fact that we are able to engage with Lake District visitors who may not otherwise visit the event’ [J]. The significance of this exhibition was recognized by the editor of The Alpine Journal, Ed Douglas. Many photographs from the exhibition were reproduced in the annual The Alpine Journal 2018 alongside Westaway’s article [6].

Westaway has had a longstanding commitment to bringing contemporary scholarship to diverse communities of interest in the wider outdoor movement, particularly via the Kendal Mountain Festival. In November 2014 Westaway presented a public lecture at the Kendal Mountain Festival, entitled ‘That Undisclosed World: Eric Shipton and the Imperial Security State’ based on his research [4]. Westaway has worked with the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers (RGS-IBG) to research, interpret, and contextualize their film archive and make it accessible to diverse audiences. Westaway’s research on the amateur films of Sir C. P. Skrine, shot in Iran in the 1930s and 1940s, was presented at a public lecture at the RGS in London on the 22nd November 2017 (audience 66), part of their ‘Be Inspired’ lecture series. A related article about the research in The Conversation, entitled ‘British Empire’s hidden workings in India and Iran revealed in remarkable new film footage’, resulted in 30,973 reads. Westaway worked with the RGS-IBG and British Film Institute to research, present and host a film session at the Kendal Mountain Festival 2018 entitled ‘The Royal Geographical Society Film Archive at Kendal’, which drew on his published research [4, 5]. This featured amateur film from Sir C. P. Skrine, a session on Everest films from 1933 by Jan Faull and a full screening of the 1934 documentary Wings Over Everest (audience 75) [G]. Festival Manager Paul Scully said: ‘The RGS event and Wings Over Everest film was again another brilliant session where we were able to bring incredible films from that era to the big screen. I must thank you for all your hard work dealing with the BFI and the RGS to secure the rights to screen them at Kendal. The research was very detailed and was a joy to listen to.… Thank you once again for your support and hard work on these sessions. The feedback has been brilliant and an excellent addition to the Mountain Festival’ [J].