Home front communities recalled

More than £200,000 is being given by the Big Lottery Fund

The roles played by NI's 'home front communities' during World War II are to be marked by a series of events.

About 30 projects are to receive grants to stage activities including a play about the Belfast Blitz.

More than £200,000 is being given by the Big Lottery Fund to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of the war under the Home Front Recall programme.

People suffering from a muscle-wasting condition will visit war museums in Yorkshire.

One Londonderry project will publish the diary of a local war hero who saw action in North Africa and Italy.

Big Lottery Fund NI Board Member Breidge Gadd, said: "For over 18 months now the Big Lottery Fund has been funding schemes to help ensure that the lessons of the Second World War and the sacrifices made by the wartime generation are not forgotten.

"The Heroes Return and Home Front Recall schemes have been pivotal elements of our Veterans Reunited programme, which also included the Their Past Your Future strand aimed directly at schools."

County Down drama group Stagestruck is staging a play about the war to be performed for the rest of the Banbridge community.

Director Patricia Mulligan said: "This is a play about one day during the Blitz on Belfast. It is set on Easter Tuesday, 1941 and a whole array of characters have their stories told.

"The children will play various characters including someone at the morgue, an ack-ack gun battery, a dance hall, someone living in a house near Belfast Zoo and people at the docks.

"There is also a scene where we see a German Luftwaffe officer prepare his men to bomb Belfast."