Accessibility statement

Stories of Mental Health from York: Past, Present, and Future

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In December 2024 the Borthwick Institute was awarded £9,000 from the University of York’s Mentally Fit York fund to undertake the engagement project ‘Stories of Mental Health from York: Past, Present and Future’. This year-long project aims to engage new audiences with our mental health archive collections in new and more creative ways, demonstrating the importance of archives in helping us contextualise and make sense of our lived experiences.

The Borthwick holds significant and notable archives related to the history of mental health in York between the late eighteenth and 20th centuries. Our collections include the archives of Bootham and Clifton Hospitals, Naburn Hospital, and The Retreat Quaker-run private hospital. This particular project will take as its focus the surviving personal archives of patients at The Retreat between 1800 and c.1924.

Through four facilitated workshops delivered by local artists Stephen Lee Hodgkins and Griselda Goldsbrough participants from target audiences will engage with the archive collections and explore the concept of representation of patients with poor mental health in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The workshops will also allow participants to reflect on to what extent circumstances have changed today (or otherwise). Stephen and Griselda both have extensive experience of working with patients at York Hospital, Foss Park Hospital, St Nicks and other local health and wellbeing initiatives.

The output of this project will be a collective artwork created by the group in response to the mental health collections at the Borthwick and reflecting on representation in mental health care today. The artwork will become a permanent part of the University of York art collection, and we will be holding a publicity event and public exhibition to promote the project later in 2025. Alongside the workshops, we will host a panel discussion on how archives and cultural heritage records can support conversations around present-day policy and decision-making, ensuring the voices of today are heard. We are hoping that the project will engage attendees with the history of York, which can help with issues around identity, belonging and sense of place. By working with archives relating to mental health patients in the past, we also hope that we can work towards normalising mental health and attitudes towards it. Having poor mental health is not a new phenomenon, and we feel this project will support participants to recognise this.

The project will run until December 2025.  If you have any questions please contact Laura Yeoman, Access and Digital Engagement Archivist (Laura.Yeoman@york.ac.uk), or Dorothy Waugh, Digital Preservation Archivist (Dorothy.Waugh@york.ac.uk).