The Half Life of the Blitz
HHC Arcade
Until 31 January 2025
A major new exhibition by The University of Lincoln, funded by AHRC, which creates a new history of post-war Hull by studying the lives and experiences of the City’s people between the Second World War and the present day. Through community workshops, oral history interviews with Hull people and researching in archives across the country, a team of historians led by Dr James Greenhalgh have built a picture of how the City has changed and what is important to its people. The exhibition looks at some of the elements which seemed most important to the project’s volunteers and contributors and examines how Hull sees and remembers itself and its past.
"The End of the Line: from the Blitz to Humberopolis and all the Hulls that could have been"
Dr James Greenhalgh, University of Lincoln
Tuesday 14 January, 12.30pm
For the last three years the "Half Life of the Blitz" project has been looking at what Hull means to its people, how it is viewed from outside and what that has meant for the built environment, economy and citizens of the city since the Second World War. This talk looks at the different Hulls that have existed in both the local and national imagination, in the memories of locals and in the multitude of plans, schemes and projects that sought to remake Hull over the twentieth century. It looks at the North East Coast Town, the modernist city of the post-war, the North Sea economic powerhouse and the plans for Humberopolis. It asks why Hull has come to occupy the position it does (or perhaps often doesn’t) in the national conversation and asks what that means for both historians and the people of Hull itself.