Welcome to the DRC Disability History Project

Welcome to our Disability History blog.

On 1st May 2013 the Disability Resource Centre in Birmingham UK, launched a new Disability History project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The project aims to collect documents, photographs and other historical materials which tell the stories of the lives of disabled people in Birmingham and the wider West Midlands area during the 20th century. The plan is to make digital copies of these materials which can be transcribed into other accessible formats, published on line and shared where consent is given to do this and ultimately to archive or to use some of the donated materials, or parts of them, to create and share new learning resources or simply to tell stories.

As well as collecting paper-based historical materials to scan and digitise, we will also carry out a number of oral history interviews with older disabled people in the West Midlands and invite disabled people to contribute their memories in written or other formats. We will therefore recruit a team of volunteers to support us in the following activities:

• Telling their own personal stories or the stories of organisations, events and changes
• Researching materials
• Copying and transcribing materials from and into different formats
• Conducting and recording interviews
• Editing, writing and blogging
• Supporting events and liaising with UK Disability History Month
• Organising, cataloguing  and preserving the archive

The project will link in to UK Disability History Month by sharing resources and materials, providing information about events and activities during UK Disability History Month (22nd November to 22nd December) and by generally encouraging and developing the participation of people in the West Midlands in the national disability history project.

The launch of our HLF funded 12 month project also coincides with the 21st anniversary of our own organisation, Disability Resource Centre which was founded in Birmingham by the Birmingham Disability Rights Group in 1992.

This HLF funded project complements a previous one in which we wrote a book recording the history of how disabled people in Birmingham set up a Disability Rights Group and subsequently campaigned for their own user led centre. The book was published in 2010 and was called Forward - The History of Birmingham Disability Resource Centre.

Whilst not wishing to pre-empt the personal memories of local disabled people who contribute to the project, we can predict that certain underlying themes may emerge:

• Changes in general social conditions, policies and attitudes affecting the lives of disabled people in the 20th century
• The decline and closure of some of the institutions that were prevalent at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries, for instance asylums, workhouse infirmaries and colonies
• The growth and diversification of the charity sector and the trends and changes affecting that sector
• The language, media portrayal and culture of disability
• The development of self determined organisations throughout the 20th century with a blossoming of disabled people's organisations from the 1980s
• The legacy of two world wars on disabled people in Britain and other key historical trends, movements and events such as the influence of eugenics, the establishment of the NHS and introduction of other new legislation, services and benefits
• Changes in education, housing, transport, access to services and employment
• The development of new definitions and ideas about disability, notably the Social model of disability
• The emergence of a civil and human rights based view of disability and the linkage between different campaigns and movements

As we launch our project in May 2013, we do so in a wider context of cuts to benefits and services to disabled people. Whilst a history project is by its nature concerned with making a record and providing a commentary on and interpretation of the events of the past, heritage on the other hand is about conveying our understanding of the past to present and future generations. It will therefore be interesting to measure the extent of the perceived progress and positive change experienced by older disabled people during their lives in the 20th century against more recent events.

Are we still going 'forward' or is there a danger, as many suggest, of returning to past conditions, policies and attitudes?

If you would like to contribute resources or memories, volunteer for the project or just be kept informed with progress, please email Pete Millington at pmillington@disability.co.uk

Or join our Facebook Group Disability History Project West Midlands 

 

Funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund