| Joan's War is part of a student project about diaries. Visit its sister website at: thediaryofjoan.wordpress.com |
| About Joan's War
'Joan's War' is part of a broader student project about diaries, their social value, and their potential for interpretation within a museum environment. It takes a wartime five-year diary and picks it apart in order to offer its audience a choice of content, broken down into modest portions and presented in an engaging format. Despite being called Joan's War, the really surprising thing about Joan's diary is how seldom the war is mentioned. The conflict imposes its presence upon her, which she occasionally rather petulantly acknowledges, but she makes no attempt to voluntarily contribute to the war effort. Thus, she is evacuated, she learns to knit and sew her own clothes, she cooks on rations, and later she is regularly on firewatch duty - but even then she does not take her responsibilities terribly seriously, and several times she mentions ignoring air raid sirens. With Joan making little reference to current events, and no commentary on them whatsoever, Joan's War instead concentrates on her frequent social affairs and cultural activities. By presenting familiar pastimes - such as cooking, playing cards or going to the cinema - in an interactive manner, Joan’s War attempts to engage with a modern audience, inviting them to relate to – and even connect with - her personal story. Joan's writing style is succinct, and her frequent use of shorthand and abbreviations often makes entries time-consuming to decypher, and occasionally entitrely impenetrable. Wherever possible, content has been elucidated and the shorthand transcribed in full. Joan's War is designed to be open plan and convenient. The pages are not passively viewed, but instead navigation is visual and interactive. It is a website with few pages to navigate, but offers plenty of content to explore on each page. |
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ABOUT JOAN'S ARCHIVE |