As part of our brief creating a digital exhibition with the Centre for Research Collections, we were assigned the topic of “Health and Healthcare”. This was a fascinating topic for me because my research interest is histories of HIV and AIDS in Scottish museums, and I think that heritage organisations have so much potential to help to break down stigma felt towards those with disabilities. I was very excited about using this project to spark more conversation about disabled identities and bring disabled histories to light.

Initially my group and I decided on the topic of a history of mental health due to the fact that this is one of the biggest strengths of the CRC’s Lothian Health Services Archive collections, particularly the archival material they have about the Royal Edinburgh Hospital. LHSA has a significant number of patient artworks created by those who received treatment at the Royal Ed and displaying these in an exhibition could be a way of giving a group often silenced throughout history a platform to tell their experiences on their own terms. At the same time, the most detailed and well preserved patient records are that of wealthy white men who paid for premium treatment, and we thought that this exhibition would be an excellent opportunity to acknowledge the silences within the collections and how this resonates with structural inequalities in healthcare today, especially as the coronavirus pandemic has brought conversations around mental health to the fore.

Scrapbook made by John Willis Mason, a patient who received treatment at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital on several occasions from 1864 until his death in 1901. LHSA has a significant number of his scrapbooks within their collection due to the fact that Thomas Clouston, then Physician Superintendent of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, collected patient artworks to further his understanding of mental illness. All rights reserved to Lothian Health Services Archive.

However, as we considered what interactive elements we might implement into our exhibition, we considered offering mindful exercises for visitors to carry out at home, which inspired us to begin talking about using heritage collections for mindful engagement. As we researched other organisations who have used mindfulness practices – including the National Museum of Scotland who have created mindful colouring books and audio guide trails – we realised that while there has been some work done on this area, there has been very few exhibitions where mindfulness is the central focus. Therefore, we decided to shift our idea from an exhibition on a local history of mental health to a creating Art in Mind, a co-curated exhibition about the mental health benefits of using art for mindfulness. This was extremely different from our initial idea, and certainly something that I was admittedly quite intimidated by at first – while I would definitely say that seeing collections in museums and galleries is beneficial to my own mental health, I knew nothing about mindfulness – I thought this was a really exciting opportunity to try something new, as well as show the personal benefits of heritage and challenge perceptions about who mindful practice is for.