Award Winners for Volume 16
Collections from the Asylum: Past Lives, Present Tense
Social history museums strive to present exhibitions that will connect to their local audience and provoke conversation as well as provide information. The aim of this article is to describe an exhibition about a decommissioned former mental hospital that is still significant for many in the local community. The exhibition consisted of various “collections” of objects and artworks assembled by the researchers in collaboration with museum staff, along with stories collected during our research into the asylum. Some “collections” included historical images and stories from the past alongside others of creative work and technology responding to the present. Community members were keenly interested in the exhibition, but the COVID-19 pandemic and consequent border closures in Australia meant that visitors needed to attend online presentations and virtual tours rather than see the exhibits in person. The use of digital presentations along with physical artefacts brought about a new way of thinking about presenting social history to future audiences.
The article about our Collections exhibition demonstrates two ways we use to disseminate our research. The Collections exhibition itself was a way to show the general public stories and experiences we were finding out from our participants in the course of our research. It also allowed us to exhibit items that had not been made public previously. Because the research is ongoing, this was important in encouraging more people to come forward to speak to us.
Academic publication gives us an opportunity to talk about our research methods while discussing the value of each ‘collection.’ Writing the article also makes us reflect on the methodology and justify the processes we use in order to work together in an inter-disciplinary way. This is of growing importance in universities where staff are encouraged to work across and between disciplines to broaden their knowledge and expand their approaches to research. Publication in a high-profile journal like the International Journal of the Inclusive Museum also demonstrates our work to funding bodies and helped us to be successful in obtaining a research grant to continue our work. Dr Clark also included the article in her dissertation for a PhD awarded in 2023.
Being published in the International Journal of the Inclusive Museum is important to us as researchers .The audience who saw the exhibition and the audience who read the journal are parts of their respective communities to whom we want to tell the stories of members of society who, in history, have been segregated from society and stigmatised. We need to tell these stories to impress on readers that we must continue to move forward positively and inclusively to counteract the stigma still attached to mental illness today.
—Alison Watts, Eileen Clark, and Jenni Munday