Cornwall’s Regimental Museum has received grant funding of £16,575 from the Armed Forces Covenant Fund to work with Light Infantry ex-servicemen to capture their memories and share them with the public.

The project will create a new archive and incorporate soldiers’ stories into the museum’s displays, website and activities for schools. Groups of ex-servicemen will be brought together to share their stories of life in the Light Infantry, including major conflicts such as Northern Ireland, Iraq, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The museum will record soldiers talking about their experiences on video and gather photographic and documents and digitise them, creating a permanent archive. Ex-servicemen will also be involved as volunteers in the recording and digitisation process and in planning new museum displays, and a new schools workshop will be created based on the stories gathered.

The museum’s Director Mary Godwin said; ‘We’re delighted to have been awarded funding for this important project. It will strengthen understanding of the Light Infantry and really bring our collection to life, helping thousands of museum visitors to learn what it was like for the soldiers involved in events of world importance. We have some unique objects in our collection such as a large piece of the Berlin wall and we want to enable all our visitors, especially younger people, to understand their significance.’ The project will start this autumn and the new displays will be in place by mid-2018.