A PROJECT to commemorate the role of an infant education movement during the First World War has won lottery funding.

The Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) has announced a grant of just over £60,000 to the North-East region of the Workers' Educational Association to commemorate the role of the organisation and its members in the Great War.

The project, which will work across Durham, Newcastle, Sunderland, and South Shields, will include a visit by 12 volunteers to the graves of former WEA members who lost their lives in Northern France.

The WEA was launched in the North-East in 1910, just four years before the outbreak of the war, to encourage workers to study and learn new skills at a time when education was mainly accessible to the wealthy.

Part of the grant will be used to fund a touring play dramatising the early days of the WEA and the punishment of its regional secretary for refusing to fight in the war.

Ivor Crowther, head of the HLF in the North East, said: “The WEA are a hugely important organisation and have been for over 100 years here in the North East so it’s great to see this project begin and know that this important part of our wartime heritage is being explored and recorded for future generations to learn about”.