YOUNG and old converged at the RAF Museum on Tuesday, August 23, to launch an exhibition celebrating the history of Colindale’s Grahame Park Estate.

The Grahame Park Estate Story exhibition is the culmination of 18 months of work by a group of 30 local young people who interviewed residents and researched its development from the site of an aerodrome in 1910.

The GPE: Great People Everywhere project aimed to dispel the negative image of the area, and its launch was attended by more than 35 people.

Alison Kira, of Barnet Action 4 Youth, who headed the project said: “People come from all over the country to visit the RAF Museum and yet across the road is a significant historical site in itself.”

The project revealed that in its previous incarnations, the estate site was an aerodrome, featured in the 1967 film The Dirty Dozen and was the site from which the first official UK internal air mail was sent in September, 1911.

Thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, the young people received interviewing and filming training from the Oral History Society and curating and archiving workshops from the RAF Museum.

The exhibition will be displayed at the RAF Museum, Grahame Park Way, until Friday, September 30.