Grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund A Legacy of Care; 170 years at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability

The Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability is delighted to announce that it has recently been awarded a generous grant of £58,280 from The National Lottery Heritage Fund for an exciting new oral history project.

The project is a collaboration with the arts and educational charity, Digital:Works, that will gather historical content and create a series of interviews which will be used for the production of a documentary film.

Thanks to a previous grant from The National Lottery Heritage Fund in 2019, the hospital was able to catalogue, preserve, and digitise much of its archive collection. Through extensive research of the newly-accessible archive by staff and a team of trained volunteers, this new project will uncover and reassemble the stories of some of its earliest patients.

With the expertise of Digital:Works, the use of specially-adapted technologies, and the assistance of skilled clinicians and therapists, the project will support the hospital’s current patients to express themselves and leave a lasting legacy of their unique experiences. Patients and volunteers will attend workshops in oral history and heritage skills, which will be brought to life by actors from the disabled community. Patients will form the core of the production team, and they will have the opportunity to interview each other and to make decisions on the material to be included in the documentary film.

The hospital is extremely thankful to The National Lottery Heritage Fund for making this project a reality. It marks the 170^th anniversary of the hospital, and will make a major contribution to its heritage. The project will utilise the hospital’s specialist staff and technologies, as well as its important archive collections, to build a picture of what life is like from the perspective of its patients. Due to the seriousness of their disabilities, people with brain injuries often require adaptive measures, or need to rely on others, to communicate. The project will break down these barriers, and provide inclusive and accessible heritage for future researchers and challenge existing ideas about disability and disability history.