Public Engagement

The Centre has a commitment to furthering public understanding of medicine and its past, and encouraging those who are interested in active engagement in the practice of the history of medicine. Outreach historian, Carole Reeves responds to enquiries from the media, government departments, the health service, authors, artists, actors, academics, publishers, museums, charities, and others seeking expert speakers, historical information or historical perspectives on current medical and health issues. She assists Centre staff and students in their own outreach projects and also engages them in outreach activities such as museum, school and local history events. She gives press, radio and television interviews, and guided tours around Wellcome Collection exhibitions to visiting groups from the UK and abroad. The Centre’s first Highlights brochure won the UCL Corporate Identity prize 2008. This publication is distributed worldwide and is also downloadable from the Centre website.

‘The Children of Craig-y-nos’, begun in 2007 as a search for the ex-patients of a tuberculosis sanatorium in south Wales, has collected over 100 oral testimonies and 1200 photographs documenting its history from 1922 to 1959 (http://craig-y-nos.blogspot.com and http://childrenofcraigynos.com). A third photographic exhibition held at Swansea Museum in summer 2008 was ‘manned’ by ex-patients and staff who also took part with Carole in a 30-minute BBC Radio Wales programme, ‘Bed rest, pine trees and fresh air: Welsh sanatoria. Over 700 visitors from around the world signed the exhibition visitors’ book. Carole also provides resource material for community volunteers to talk to local groups. The project was awarded a Heritage Lottery Grant under the Awards for All Wales scheme to produce a print-on-demand book, published on 1 May 2009 and downloadable from the website (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/histmed/downloads/the_children_of_craig_y_nos.pdf). The Craig-y-nos online exhibition was selected by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Global TB to be linked to its front page. Carole has given talks about the project at the Oral History Society annual conference, the British Society for the History of Paediatrics and Child Health, and at CASCO, Utrecht. The success of Craig-y-nos has resulted in spin-off projects including Jane Freeland’s oral history of the Marguerite Hepton Hospital, Yorkshire, (http://margueriteheptonhospital.blogspot.com/), and David Pearce’s memories of Kensington Hospital, Pembrokeshire (http://kensingtonhospitalmemories.blogspot.com/).

Carole also helps people produce medical histories of their communities. This year, Christine Gowing, a resident of Churchill village in the Cotswolds, has been searching local archives, recording oral histories, and gathering images and memorabilia to create an exhibition in Churcill’s heritage centre (http://www.churchillheritage.org.uk/Health%20and%20Healing.htm). Carole responds to requests for medical advice from family historians, such as the interpretation of death certificates and diaries, and to individuals undertaking specific family histories, which are outside the scope of genealogy. An example is Philip Mason who is researching a history of stillbirths - looking at the history of registration, burial, social and medical attitudes towards stillbirth. She also assists adoption workers by providing resources and information which add to adopted people’s sense of identity.

Carole gives presentations on the twice-yearly teacher in-service training (INSET) days organised by the Wellcome Trust to help teachers teach the ‘Medicine through Time’ GCSE history option. Recent events considered 20th century medical advances. In 2008, she was invited to give a public lecture at the Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester, as part of an ‘Open your mind’ event to coincide with the Museum’s Body Worlds 4, an exhibition of real human bodies prepared by the artist / anatomist, Gunther von Hagens. This was a very successful evening, subsequent to which she provided resource material to teachers who had attended the talk to help with lessons on transplantation and medical ethics. She gave versions of this talk in the Centre to school groups on behalf of the ‘Into University’ scheme (http://www.intouniversity.org/), supported by UCL. Carole was an invited judge at the first schools debating competition organised by The Centre for Health, Medicine and Society, Oxford Brookes University. She is a member of the advisory committee for the Science Museum’s multi-media history of medicine website, Brought to Life (http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife.aspx) aimed at school pupils and undergraduates studying history of medicine. She contributes to Wellcome Trust public engagement / History of Medicine funding information events for outreach workers from all over the UK, and also referees public engagement grant applications for the Wellcome Trust, and acts as mentor/advisor to successful grant applicants who require project guidance. She is a Trustee of the Bethlam Art and History Collections Trust, which has an active outreach programme (http://www.bethlemheritage.org.uk/).

The ‘Bloomsbury Project’ is a collaborative venture between UCL’s English Department and the Centre, and aims to create an archive of Bloomsbury in the 19th-century when it became an important centre of London’s intellectual life. An outreach blog (http://www.bloomsburypeople.blogspot.com/) is hoping to gather information about the ordinary professional and working people of Bloomsbury - the journalists, publishers, librarians, hospital employees - who contributed to this increasingly vibrant and unique area of London. In June 2008, the Centre celebrated the achievements of its late colleague, Roy Porter, with the unveiling of a plaque on his childhood home in south London.

‘Today’s neuroscience, tomorrow’s history’, a series of video interviews with twelve of the UK’s leading neuroscientists, has been turned into podcasts and YouTube videoclips, reaching new global audiences. The quality of these podcasts on the Centre website was instrumental in UCL being selected by Apple to launch a platform on iTunes U. UCL is the first mainstream UK university to pioneer global participation in iTunes U, and in August 2008, two neuroscience clips featured in the top ten in the Health and Medicine section. In addition, fully interactive, indexed and packaged DVDs are available. A new series of podcasts, ‘The History of Smallpox Eradication’, is also now available on the Centre website. The Centre website has been redesigned and a content management scheme adopted, which allows individuals to post news and information. Carole produces weekly updates, consisting of news, jobs and information about grants and awards. Alerts to these updates extend beyond the Centre to academics and students around the world as well as UK, US, European and Australian government departments, journalists, the BBC, NHS managers and policy makers, publishers, librarys, museums, press offices. Two successful online campaigns – offering free Wellcome Witness volumes 1-20 and free packs of postcards enable us to distribute additional information about the Centre and its activities. Delegates to all Centre conferences, symposia and workshops receive high quality branded bags, notepads, lanyards, pens, pencils and other publicity and educational material.

Dr Carole Reeves
The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine
183 Euston Road
London NW1 2BE

Tel: +44 (0)20 7679 8135
Email: c.reeves@ucl.ac.uk