An Aberystwyth Second World War project is looking for photographs and other memorabilia for an “exciting” exhibition this autumn.

The People’s Voices in a People’s War: Aberystwyth 1939-1945 community project brings together the Department of History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University, the National Library OF Wales, Ceredigion Archives, Ceredigion Museum and Aberystwyth Arts Centre to bring alive the local stories and experiences of war 80 years ago.

The planned exhibition, which will be held in the arts centre, will be a photographic history of the experiences of World War Two in Aberystwyth and how local people lived through that time.

Project lead Dr Siân Nicholas, who is part of the Department of History and Welsh History in Aberystwyth University, said: “If you have any photographs depicting family members, whether in uniform or in ‘civvies’, wartime events like tea dances, or VE day celebrations, ‘digging for victory,’ war time shopping and rationing, or ‘make do and mend’, wartime entertainments, welcoming American GIs, or simply the everyday experiences of ‘carrying on’ in wartime Aberystwyth and the local area, we’d love to hear from you.

“We welcome new contributions from anyone with a wartime story to tell.”

The project, which is sponsored by the National Heritage Lottery Fund and the Aberystwyth War Memorial Fund, is also planning other events over the autumn.

These events include sessions with archivists at Ceredigion Archives and the National Library on some of the WWII records they hold, archiving oral history with the Unlocking our Sound Heritage Project, and a film screening in November of two contemporary films, ‘Green Mountain, Black Mountain,’ a Ministry of Information wartime ‘short’ scripted by Dylan Thomas, and ‘Halfway House,’ an evocative mystery from Ealing Studios set in an eerie inn in mid-Wales.

All these events are open to the public. If you’d like to know more about them, contact Kate Sullivan at [email protected] or Dr Siân Nicholas at [email protected]

The project’s blog can be found here. They can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.