CWGF and the Post Office Remembrance Fellowship: sharing the remembrance journey together

We are delighted to announce that the Post Office Remembrance Fellowship (PORF) has awarded the Foundation a generous grant to develop three ambitious projects which will provide a living memorial to the men and women of the General Post Office (GPO) who died in the two World Wars.  

Using the names recorded for posterity in the Post Office Fellowship of Remembrance Memorial Books as a starting point, we aim to uncover and disseminate hundreds of individual untold stories, through a range of innovative, interpretive channels. The Foundation’s Executive Director, John Grain, explains: 

“This grant enables us to develop hugely exciting education and outreach programmes, both here in the UK, at the sites of historic remembrance and even globally - reaching out to new and existing audiences. It is a tremendous endorsement for the Foundation from the PORF and we thank their trustees wholeheartedly.” 

Our projects for 2023 include:  

Tracking the Post

Tracking the Post involves our education team creating a unique series of Post Office Heritage Trails highlighting the contribution of the 12,830 postal workers employed by the GPO who are buried or commemorated in cemeteries and on memorials worldwide, for example, at the Post Office Rifles Cemetery in Festubert, northern France.

Each trail will make full use of digital technology, incorporating original video and audio content for audiences to access, as well as giving them the opportunity to ‘visit’ virtually, via a download option. 

Delivering the Post

Delivering the Post encourages volunteers to work alongside Commission staff, archivists, educators and historians, researching records - including the Post Office Fellowship of Remembrance Memorial Books – to identify personal and group histories of Post Office employees.

These emerging narratives will be developed into presentations used in our Speakers and Tour Guides’ Programme, a service offering free talks and tours to a wide range of groups across the country. Wherever possible we will tailor content to include the story of a local or regional Post Office worker, ensuring it is relevant to our audiences.  

Collecting the Post

Collecting the Post entails collaborating with developers to create an accessible, digital portal where anyone - individuals, communities, families, researchers - can share their stories, memories, pictures, photographs and ephemera about the Post Office employees who lost their lives in the two World Wars.

This user-generated approach will result in a rich and diverse repository, with the potential to bring each individual’s story to life through the abundance of personal, anecdotal and third-party information waiting to be revealed.

It also complements the Commission’s existing free database, which contains the official record of every Commonwealth casualty but which, by necessity, can only incorporate verified information, allowing us, for the first time, to link the two.

Throughout the project, we intend to nurture new relationships with young volunteers via school and youth organisations such as the Air Cadets, as well as working with diaspora communities through our links to the Army Multicultural Network and the Punjabi community.  

We anticipate this collaboration between the Post Office Remembrance Fellowship and the Commonwealth War Graves Foundation heralds the start of a productive long-term partnership.

Working together, we will maximise the potential of our exceptional collections and resources, engage a wide range of people and encourage them to discover, as well as contribute to, the stories which encompass our shared history.  

For more information, please visit the Post Office Fellowship of Remembrance website.