Education and storytelling about the Great War: The ‘Son et Lumière’ in Pozières, France

Abstract

Education about the Great War of 1914-18 is part of the tourist offerings of various organisations on the Somme in France, but a number of challenges are involved. The battlefield context does not easily accommodate the linguistic-scientifically based education models upon which most western education is formed. Most of the memorials and the landscape are devoid of explicit information, and tourists visit places for pleasure and not for educational reasons. The use of emotion through story telling is one technique for imparting information and encouraging visitors to engage deeply with information at particular sites. The Son et Lumi re event uses this technique to help visitors understand the battles of 1916 that raged in the small village of Pozi res. A questionnaire found that commemoration and education were strongly correlated and were the most important motivators for the audience.