1.5 Blog Post One: A Focus on Mental Health

Our brief is to curate an online exhibition on Health and Healthcare using artworks found in the Centre for Research Collections. By the time of our first ideas-sharing session, we had already settled upon a narrower focal point: mental health. Thematically, we felt that this focus was pertinent given the events surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, we felt that there were numerous supplemental resources outside the art collections that might be used to provide a solid foundation for the exhibition, such as those found in the NHS Lothian Archives.

Identifying a target audience, exhibition structure, ethics, and collections focus were all discussed during our meeting, but one issue that arose really struck me as an important one, and one that would be all too easy to neglect. We were asked to consider the ways in which our work on the project might come with risks not just to the visitors and the collaborators, but also to us. We are, after all, going to be interacting with objects and themes that can have a powerful impact on us and research into these collections may at times be difficult. Mental health has (statistically at least) likely impacted all of us directly or indirectly one time or another.

Taking the time at the early stages of the project to develop plans to support the mental health of all persons working on the exhibition will be an essential early step in the process. As part of the university, we are already well provisioned with resources (such as the Wellbeing Centre and Student Counselling), and we can also draw upon external resources (such as advice pages from reliable sources such as Mind).

As part of developing these plans we will need to reflect on how we can ensure that these resources are readily available to all of us, what we can do as part of our working practices, and how we can manage our team’s emotional workload alongside other aspects of project development.