Creative University students join forces with military

University students are giving a window into the world of armed forces personnel, thanks to a £12,000 grant from the Ministry of Defence.

Students in the University of Portsmouth’s Creative and Cultural Industries faculty are working alongside retired armed service personnel and their families to learn more about how it felt to be a new recruit, to be posted overseas, or to be far from home, something many first year students are also familiar with.

The students will create art, including photography, illustration, short films and creative writing, and the finished works will go on display in an exhibition in Space, the art gallery in Eldon building, next month.

Film footage taken of students talking to and working with armed forces personnel on the project will also be shown.

Natalie Long, a senior lecturer at the University and one of the leaders on the project, said: “As a city steeped in naval heritage, many local families will be familiar with how it feels when loved ones are far from home and both the joys and the challenges they face when servicemen and women return and rejoin their families.

“The students and the retired and serving armed forces staff live side by side in the city and in some respects they live in very different worlds, though they do have in common an understanding of being far from home.

“This project is allowing servicemen and women a chance to show students their medals and photographs and tell their stories and we very much hope it will be a two-way process with students and those they meet learning from each other.”

Students are using the artifacts and stories as inspiration for a piece of work relating to their own area of study, including photography, textile design, graphics or film.

The project is funded by the Armed Forces Community Covenant scheme which gives money to community projects to benefit servicemen and women and their families.

Staff and students are working with Somerstown residents and alongside local artists, Paul Gonella, of Strong Island Media, and Sharon Court, who leads the Somerstown Stories local history project.

Paul said: “We are really excited to be involved with this community project that strives to build creative connections, understanding and empathy between the students of the University and the local community of active and ex-service personnel.”

Residents taking part have had the opportunity to learn new things through taster workshops and a tour of the recently extended Eldon Building, home to the faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries.

Among some of the comments made on the day were:

“We’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with the students. We don’t get much contact with the youth of today. You read all the bad press and think…”

“There are so many students in Pompey and so many ‘homes for the bewildered’. This kind of project builds a bridge. It does us all good.”

The Far From Home exhibition opens with a special afternoon tea on Friday, March 14 and will be open to the public from March 17-26.