Hidden Memories project a year on

The first face-to-face project team meet-up at the site of Mapperley hospital, August 2020.

It is just over a year ago when I had to make the decision of changing this heritage project from face-to-face to remote delivery. Since recruiting five students from the Master in Heritage Studies at Nottingham Trent University and training them remotely on the theory and practice of remote oral history interviewing, the project team has now recorded seventeen oral histories of carers, nurses and social workers.

The oral histories have informed an online audio-visual exhibition that explores the memories of the changing dimensions of mental health care from institutional to community care provision. The oral histories exhibition is organised in three main themes: care in the mental hospital, transition to community care, and early care in the community. The oral histories, alongside the copies of personal photographs offered by participants, will form a discrete audio-visual collection that will be deposited at Nottingham Central Library in autumn 2021 to be preserved and made accessible to future generations.

The Hidden Memories project is in the process of being evaluated. The evaluation report will be uploaded to the website’s home page in due course.

Unfortunately we were unable to reach out to mental health service users as day centres have been closed since the beginning of the pandemic. Some oral histories with ex-patients who experienced the transition from the mental hospitals to care in the community in Nottingham are available here.

We hope to invite all participants from this project and our supporters for a celebration of the hidden heritage of Nottingham Mental Healthcare at Nottingham Castle in 2022, when it reopens. A new heritage project is also in the pipeline, Follow us on Twitter @HealthMemories to hear about future developments.

A big thank you goes to our wonderful volunteers and all of the interviewees who came forward to share their memories and reflections of the changing dimension of the provision of care in Nottingham in the 1990s. Also a big thank you goes to the Heritage Lottery Fund for funding this project.

It is still possible to share your memories of the transition to community care via the project’s blog. If you would like to do so, please get in touch.

Verusca Calabria