Download prospectus 2017-2019 - Friends of Lancashire Archives

PROSPECTUS
2017-2019
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INTRODUCTION
Whittingham Lives is a two year multi-faceted arts and heritage project aimed at
researching, exploring, celebrating, and maybe critically reviewing, the culture
and legacy of Whittingham Asylum in Preston, from its beginnings in the 1850s till
its closure and demolition in 2016.
Its aims are:
“to preserve for future generations a comprehensive record of the history, culture
and achievements of Whittingham Asylum”.
Constitution of the Whittingham Lives Association
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WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?
The Whittingham Lives is a programme of arts and heritage events, to be held in and around Preston over the next two years. It is for
mental health service users, ex-patients and workers, artists, musicians, visualizers, writers and members of the public. Its central aim is to
change public attitudes towards mental illness. It has five creative strands:
Heritage: where, when, how, why it was built and who worked
there
Musical: concerts, recitals, new commissions, singing, community
events
Visual:
photographs, paintings, sculpture, exhibitions,
workshops
Literary: research, creative writing, drama, poetry, short stories,
life-writing and readings
Digital:
on-line blogs, talks, reports, learning materials,
international link-ups
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HERITAGE
Whittingham Lives will open new opportunities for recording,
exhibiting and preserving the historical, physical, visual, written,
oral and photographic narratives associated with Whittingham
Asylum. It will research the role of early trades’ unions in the
nursing of mentally ill patients. It will record the stories of the ordinary, and extraordinary,
people who lived and worked there. It will seek to preserve the physical archive records and
objects, associated with the asylum, for future generations to explore. In Food, Farming and
the Asylum Diet, we will even eat the food that the asylum provided and explore the link
between good diet and good mental well-being.
The project will look at the extensive textual and visual
materials held at Lancashire County Council Archives
in Preston and elsewhere. It will present items to the
public, some for the first time, physical records,
museum artefacts, pieces from private collections,
historic images, which display the life and culture of
Whittingham Asylum as it changed over the 150 years
of its existence.
Swallowed Objects:361
buttons recovered, postmortem
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MUSICAL
Like most asylums, music
played an enormous part in the life of Whittingham. Patients and staff played, performed,
danced and listened to music throughout its life. We would like to find out more about
Whittingham’s musical heritage and explore the use of music in therapeutic settings.
There will be courses on song-writing, concerts of music by ‘mad’ composers, a newly
commissioned choral piece on a theme of madness for amateur choirs and professional
soloists. There’ll be a celebration of the music (and paintings) of Kevin Coyne who was
once an Occupational Therapist at Whittingham and was himself plagued by depression
throughout his creative life.
But it was by no means all doom and gloom! Whittingham put on full-scale stage musicals throughout the 20th
century. It would be nice to find people who took part.
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VISUAL
The visual world has been part of the
therapeutic treatment options for
service users almost since the
asylum movement started. The buildings themselves were often very beautiful and set in attractive rural locations.
Initially, their architectural features were of the highest aesthetic quality. In the more enlightened institutions, the
visual arts were encouraged as part of the recovery process. Patients made their own imagery, often in the most
unlikely places. We would like to involve current service users, communities, ex-staff, workers and the public in
exploring and adding to this visual legacy.
There is a very
extensive range of
photographic material
associated with
Whittingham, ranging
from early portraiture
of patients…..to the
wilder outreaches of
urban explorers.
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LITERARY
‘O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!
I would not be mad.’ King Lear
But thousands were; and some of our most inspired literature comes from people who suffered enduring mental health conditions. Literary
Whittingham Lives wants to explore the links between writing and our mental states, by running workshops and creative writing sessions,
encouraging service users and members of the public, to explore their internal selves and give shape to their feelings through the act of writing.
There may be some people – some ‘mute inglorious Miltons’ - as Gray termed them, who sleep unknown amongst the archive material. There
may be others, living in our own communities, who deserve to have their gifts developed, recognised and published. That’s what Whittingham
Lives, will try to achieve.
And with actors and service
users, we’d like to write a new play,
Whittingham Lives, about patients,
family and staff
who lived and worked there, in the
period just before the
First World War.
Much Madness is divinest Sense
To a discerning Eye
Much Sense the starkest
Madness
‘Tis the Majority
In all this, as All, prevail
Assent and you are sane
Demur – you’re straight
Dangerous
And handled with a Chain.
Emily Dickinson
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DIGITAL
The Story of Whittingham Asylum needs to be more widely known.
Even in the preparatory research period of this last three years, we have received enquiries from all over Britain and abroad; from current and
former patients, survivor movement activists, ex- employees, artists, actors, painters, writers, musicians and members of the general public.
We have given talks to local history groups, arts organisations, academic conferences, politicians, NHS groupings and the Royal College of
Psychiatrists. There is an enormous revival of interest in the asylum movement and we believe that it is now time for a re-visioning of how they
worked, their benefits and faults and the therapeutic value of these vast institutions. We have no interest in bringing back the asylums, but they
need a more nuanced, critical examination; if only to stop us thinking that the present system is ‘good enough’. It isn’t.
To do this we need websites, Facebook pages, Twitter account, blogs, You tube videos, Whats apps and Snapchats – which, at the present
time, we do not have. If you’d like to help, we’d love to hear from you. Email Dr Eric Northey, secretary of the Whittingham Lives Association at
[email protected]
The Management Board
Whittingham Lives Association.
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Supported by
Photos courtesy of Lancashire County Council Archives
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