Yorkshire public urged to maintain '˜fitting tributes' to First World War heroes

Civic Voice are the national charity for the civic movement in England and they are hoping to recruit around 500 volunteers from the county to help with the project. The people involved would identify local war memorials, survey the condition of these and take action to ensure that these are of an appropriate standard, to remember those who sacrificed their lives.

It is part of the First World War Memorial Programme, which has funding available for repair and conservation of the memorials, with those skills being taught to volunteers. The programme is run jointly by Civic Voice, Historic England, the Imperial War Museum and the War Memorials Trust.

Kevin Trickett is chair of the Yorkshire and Humber Association for Civic Societies and he encouraged more people to help. “We have been promoting awareness of this campaign,” he said. “It is extremely important. War memorials are part of our heritage.

“It’s not just about the obvious memorials, the standing ones. It’s also about the ones, for example, in schools and factories, where pupils and workers went out and didn’t come back.”

There are about 40 civic societies in the region, comprising of roughly 7,000 people. Mr Trickett, who is a member of the Wakefield Civic Society, is hoping that these can keep expanding and that they will have more support from younger people too.

“We have been trying to expand our reach into younger generations,” he said. “People involved tend to be thought of as those who are old, retired, middle-class, but we have tried with social media to extend our reach and it has paid dividends.”

There are many roles available in the new project, including a war memorials co-ordinator and a centenary listings role, which can be found on the Civic Voice website.

Hull is an area that Civic Voice are currently concentrating on. Michael Reeve, a volunteer War Memorials Local Leader for Hull, said: “We are holding a workshop at the University of Hull on Thursday 18 February to introduce the project and train volunteers on how to record the condition of war memorials. We would like as many people as possible to come along.”

Civic Voice state that their aim is to develop a society where everyone can say “I care about where I live”.