The KOYLI Outreach Projects
As part of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry project, our outreach volunteers are helping us run two projects with local veterans and young carers. The works created will be displayed in an exhibition next year.
The first of the projects is with veterans from across Doncaster and beyond. The veterans are working with our outreach volunteers and Mandy Keating, a local artist who has worked with us on previous heritage projects. Together they’re exploring objects from the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry collections. They’re using the collections and what they learn to create art that speaks to their own experiences in the armed forces.
We’re making use of a variety of objects in these sessions, and are hoping to produce many different kinds of art as we go, directed by the club members and their interests and knowledge. Alongside attendees from the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and The Light Infantry (the KOYLI’s successor), we have sappers from the Royal Engineers and nurses from the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps, and others all sharing stories and experiences.
There’s also our young carer’s club, where young people will be working with a different artist on another series of creative projects. We’re very excited by the way this project is shaping up, but we aren’t ready to share any details about it right now. Watch this space!
If you’re interested in possibly joining us as an outreach volunteer, then please do email us and we can have a chat about the work involved.
If you have an armed forces background and are interested in coming to one of the veteran’s art club sessions, then our next few sessions are running on:
- Friday 24 May, 10.30am – 12.30pm
- Saturday 8 June, 1pm – 3pm
- Friday 28 June, 10.30am – 12.30pm
They’re all running in the Danum Gallery, Library and Museum, and if you have any questions at all please get in touch with us at the same email address above. We’d love to hear from you!
All images of objects from the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry Collection are shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), credit to Heritage Doncaster.