RAF Museum knowledge transfer collaboration

After working on this project for 2 years, BA Illustration students at Middlesex University have now completed an exciting Heritage Lottery funded project in collaboration with the RAF Museum at Hendon. All the students were invited to ‘pitch’ for the project by illustrating 2 double page spreads of the same story and the best 10 submissions were chosen jointly with the team from the RAF. The chosen students, ranging from 1st, 2nd and 3rd years were then given their own story to relate. The students worked extremely hard, to tell the stories in an exciting but challenging format and in a way that made them relevant to today’s audience whilst maintaining historical accuracy.
The project was art directed by illustration programme leader, Nancy Slonims and web design was provided by Middlesex graduate Fred Campbell. The resulting work is an online 'animated' graphic novel telling the history of the RAF aerodrome at Hendon, from its earliest days to the present day, told through 9 illustrated stories from different periods of time and an illustrated landing page. For example, the story of young women in 1919 loosing their important wartime jobs as men return from the front. There’s a story about WAAF stationed at the base in 1943 and another about young men invalided out of the RAF re-applying for flying jobs at the base in 1946.
The RAF museum received lottery funding as part of a very large regeneration project and our project was identified as an important part of the outreach programme