You are very warmly welcome to a series of roundtables around mental health, archiving, the arts, and the pandemic which emerges out of the GW4 2022 Crucible on Mental Health and Well-being Research and has been organised by an interdisciplinary team of early career researchers from across the universities of Exeter, Bristol, and Cardiff.
We’ll be meeting online at lunchtime across the first three Fridays of December to hear from a fabulous line-up of speakers from a range of disciplinary as well as professional backgrounds.
At the root of our conversations about archiving and mental health is the conviction that looking back in times of crisis might do something to or for us: it may anchor us in seemingly unprecedented times; allow us to find ourselves in the past; comfort or challenge us. In our third roundtable, our speakers share their reflections on what archives of mental health might do for us today and looking forward. What can finding ourselves in the past mean? How, if at all, might diverse archives of mental health have therapeutic effects? What are some key principles and practices in ensuring these archives are accessible to all? And what might curating and working with these archives mean for us not just in terms of research but also in terms of our own wellbeing?
To open up these questions, we’ve brought together five speakers whose ongoing work captures the many possibilities and challenges represented by archives of mental health. Laura Drysdale and Richard Johnson join us from the Restoration Trust, which has pioneered a form of ‘culture therapy’ that helps people with mental health conditions engage with art, culture, and heritage. Having captured the relationship between the pandemic and young people’s mental health, Meg Attwood is ideally placed to reflect on the future uses of datasets recording mental health at particular moments in time. From the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, Holly Carter-Chappell and Ruth Gidley share their expertise on collecting and curating objects and art representing historical health experiences, and on unlocking the potential of the museum as a resource for boosting wellbeing today. Our three sets of speakers will each reflect for 15 minutes on their work, before we open up the discussion to think through the value of archives of mental health together.