Researchers: Dr Kirstie Jamieson, Dr Diane Willis and Judith Fieldhouse
Project partners: Donaldson’s School, Pinewood School, Pilrig Park School
This project’s aim was to give children with learning disabilities the opportunity to curate an archive that relates to their identity, school and heritage and to support them in the heritage-making process.
People with learning disabilities are not included or represented by the heritage sector or the national and local museums and libraries that are charged with the responsibility of representing and articulating identities and cultural histories. In response to this omission by our cultural institutions, the project aims to give children with learning disabilities direct access to the Franki Raffles’ archive ‘We Can Take Pictures’ (1983). This archive is managed by St Andrews University and represents an important but neglected body of work relevant to learning disability heritage in Scotland. One of our central arguments and aims is to situate the Raffles’ archive within the unformalized category of Scotland’s ‘learning disability heritage’. To scaffold children’s understanding of the archive we are providing a series of workshops that facilitate a hands-on approach to heritage-making and curating.
I have worked with three specialist schools to consider the archive and what it can produce. For four weeks, I worked with children at Donaldsons’ School (which supports neurodivergent students) with a small class to think about visual storytelling and curating. By the end of the four weeks, pupils had generated an archive of photographs about their school and made an interactive sensory Welcome Book. We have worked at Pinewood School to consider the archive in a different way; the art teacher and I decided to think about how to develop the project across the whole year. We are also looking for ways to include making GIFs and an interactive map. We have started to work with Pilrig Park School, where a four week project is scheduled to commence in January 2026.
