World Within Walls project: Inside St. Davnet's Event

This event was run as part of Heritage Week and was funded by the HSE as part of the World Within Walls project. It was delivered by Stair: An Irish Public History Company and was supported by the Monaghan County Heritage Office.

The World within Walls project aims to bring to life the memories and history of St. Davnet’s former psychiatric hospital in Monaghan town. This institution played a major role in the town, the community and the lives of many living in the area and as such is of huge historical importance and interest. The Inside St. Davnet’s event aimed to make these memories and history real through providing a typical living experience of the institution at a point in time – 1920s.

We were delighted with the turn out the at ‘Inside St. Davnet’s’ event this weekend. The 1927 recreation of the patients’ menu was fully booked out in advance while almost 200 people turned out to take part in the guided tour. Our History Hub was busy for the day with people coming in to learn more about the hospital and also to work with our artists to create paper flowers in memory of the patients who passed through the asylum.

The 1920s meal commenced at 1pm and guests were escorted by our ‘nursing staff’ to either the male or female side of the dining room.  This was done in order to reflect the gender segregation, a striking feature of asylum life. Not only did the male and female patients eat apart but they received differing portion sizes; male patients getting larger potions than the women. Guests at the meal were also given a small extract from a case history – these were constructed from archival research on the site and used the language and phrasing of the epoch although all identifying features were altered to protect the identity of the patients. The case history included people who found themselves suffering from TB, others who were under observation for dangerous behaviour with others on the way to recovery and doing well.

Medical historian Dr. Anne Mac Lellan, the lead researcher on the World Within Walls project, gave a talk on what life would have been like in 1927 and read some extracts from the minute books and the inspector’s report for that year. “At that time St. Davnet’s was known as Cavan and Monaghan District Mental Hospital. According to the report the patients seemed clean and in good health although  overcrowding was becoming a real problem and the mental hospital was oversubscribed in both male and female wards”.

After the meal finished architecture historian Dr. Niamh Nic Ghabhann began her tour of the complex examining the layout and architecture of the site, exploring how these impacted on life at the mental hospital.  It was interesting to learn how St. Davnet’s was based on a pavilion model which aimed to move away from the more prison like radial layout that was used in earlier asylums. The original intention of Monaghan District Asylum (which was renamed as Monaghan Mental Hospital in 1924) was to provide accommodation and care for patients; balancing care with the need for control. As time progressed and overcrowding became an issue the buildings couldn’t function in the way in which they were intended and personal space was a luxury that was not afforded to many patients.

Those in attendance heard how the complex changed and developed over the years, from its construction in 1869, right up to the modern community services. It is clear from looking around the site today that huge changes have taken place. Some buildings lie empty while many have been taken over by outpatient facilities and other public services. In the last 50 years the approach to treatment of mental health has changed so dramatically that the institutional care no longer dominates. St. Davnet’s Hospital and staff were at the forefront of the move towards community care. Developments at Monaghan such as the token economy aimed to provide long term patients which the skills to be able to return to the community, such developments paved the way for the closure of its wards.

The St. Davne’ts complex is now more open to the local people, it is not uncommon to see people from the town in the ground walking their dogs enjoying the beauty and serenity of the campus. This would have been unthinkable in the 1920s when the walls were strong and the gates locked.

Pop-up Malaria Museum

Malaria Museum

Let’s Make Malaria History

The stars must have aligned just right when Marco Herbst met Andrew Lewis and Graham Fry  of the Tropical Medical Bureau. With Marco’s collection of malaria artefacts looking for a good home, and TMB’s wonderful top-floor space, it was too good of a coincidence to pass up. Vanessa Breen, with wide-ranging experience from her career in film and television, brand communication, and event organization, came on board to head up a team of creatives who will make the museum a truly unique experience, and Vincent Kenny, of Volunteer Missionary Movement lent his own experience have curated a similar project in the Royal College of Surgeons in the 80’s, the stage was set.

While the pop-up museum will coincide with World Malaria Day, on April 25^th, making Dublin part of a Global conversation about malaria, the Malaria Museum website will remain a permanent virtual space to bring together the different voices from around the world that are working to end malaria.

The Pop-up Malaria Museum, on the top floor of TMB’s Grafton Street headquarters, will take visitors into another world, far from the grey skies of Dublin. The story of malaria is a fascinating one; how far it once spread throughout the world, the mystery behind the disease, once thought to be caused by the bad air around swamps, and how that mystery was unravelled. The malaria museum will combine scientific information with a unique, off-beat visual style, to educate and entertain visitors in the life cycle of the parasite, the history and medications used to combat it, and the exciting future, with ground-breaking innovations promising a malaria vaccine that could save hundreds of thousands of lives in the very near future. The museum will aim to entertain, to educate, and, above all, to engage visitors and get them interested in the actions they can take to help in the worldwide fight against this disease.

Work by artist Fiona Byrne will form part of the exhibition.
Fiona is also a project manager for Stair: An Irish Public History Company

Malaria still kills hundreds of thousands each year, and though those numbers are dropping, there is much to be done. The Malaria Museum is a not-for profit organization, whose ongoing mission is to make malaria history. Working with corporate sponsors, and highlighting their vital work, we will curate the online space, growing it into a virtual community where ideas can be generated, shared, and refined. As we continue to expand the collection of artefacts, the pop-up museum will provide an ephemeral physical space to engage ever more people, 

and get them talking about malaria, and how

 we can come together to save lives.

Contemporary Craft: Curating, Collecting, Critical Writting

by Fiona Byrne

Last Saturday at Collins Barracks the Crafts Council of Ireland, the National Museum of Ireland and The National College of Art and Design held a conference examining the critical concerns around contemporary craft.

This day was divided into three main sections: curating, collecting and writing. During the day much was said and many issues affecting craft and craft makers were raised.

The key note speaker was Martina Margetts, senior tutor in Critical and Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art in London. She spoke about how constructing narratives around a subject always involves a form of editing. The key in her opinion is to be aware of our frames of reference and our own contexts as we write, curate or collect.

She also asked us to reflect on the question of who are the outsiders in these contexts and why? Citing Judith Scott as an example of outsider art (Scott has Down’s-Syndrome, is deaf and mute) she asked us to really consider what makes someone an outsider and are we facilitating this in our own contexts as makers, writers, curators or collectors. The choices we make with regard to representation as hugely important. Margetts emphases the ability of objects to connect us to the world and enable sense making, but what objects are we being presented with to make sense of whose world?

Juidth Scott textiles

I would like to focus in on the writing section of the day which, although it focused on craft, it contained many insights which could be universally applied. Gemma Tipton was first to speak on the topic of writing about art and craft. Her warning to the audience: be careful with how we use words and what we do and what we think we do with words. She expressed her love of writing but also her awareness of ‘how awful words can be’.

Our experiences are mostly mediated and communicated through words and using the wrong ones can have a lasting effect. We understand our past through words, so we should ensure we are using the correct ones.

Her dislike of ‘art speak’ and jargon was clearly articulated, though she does admit that there is a need for a technical language for ease of communicating. However, she feels this language is being misused and being used for exclusion rather than communication. She gives the tongue in cheek example of a ‘tea-pot’ versus ‘an interactive drinking vessel’.

There is a real risk with the language used to describe art and craft today of putting people on the ‘other side’ of the conversation rather than drawing them into it. Isn’t it the role of art to draw in the viewer and make them feel or think something, why then should the narrative around the work be different?

Tipton leaves us with the thought, words influence and we should be careful what we use this influence for.

The next speaker, Joe Hogan, master basket weaver, might seem an unlikely speaker at this stage of the day. He sees himself primarily as a maker and spoke openly about the difficulty of dragging himself away from his making to write. He often has to deprive himself of willow rods so that he has no option but to write!

This said he is well aware of the power of words and the need to be able to communicate what you do. Though his writing career has been somewhat sporadic, his policy of writing if and when he has something to say, is one to be commended.

Hogan is a strong advocate for traditional skills. He often reproduces historical baskets to better understand the objects. This hands-on approach to research demonstrates a real connection to the past. This connection has impacted on his own practice too, allowing him more freedom to experiment with new materials.

He spoke of feeling like one of the outsiders Margett spoke of. Many makers working in traditional techniques feel undervalued in today’s contemporary craft context. He asks does it always have to be new to be contemporary?

Wrapping up the writers section was Eleanor Flegg a writer who is definitely taking a new approach to writing about craft. She is currently working on a ceramic sci-fi adventure. This book grew out of a request to write a book about the potter Jack Doherty.

She describes the process as a result of dialogue between two people becoming dialogue between two bodies of work. The concept of ‘writing in parallel’ to a craft practice has allowed Flegg to shed, what she described, as the ‘strait jacket’ of the biography and release herself into a world of enchanting proes.

She began by writing about a pot which stirred negative feeling in her and she wished to resolve these feeling through the writing process. This writing then took on a life of its own.

Flegg is softly spoken and makes you lean in and hang on her words, which are rich in description. She brings us on a journey with a girl searching for the land of dreams, to met Blind Bob and share a raspberry flavoured plum jam wagon wheel and then on to then on to the home of a retired archaeologist who speaks about the voices contained within objects.

Jack Doherty, Keeper Pots

During this reading we were able to "met" the keeper pot which began this novel writing process. The pot, stolen from a dream, was being passed slowly and carefully through the room as Flegg read words which it had inspired.

Each of the speakers draws from different backgrounds and contexts but all understand the significance of language. They understand the legacy that words can leave and are conscious not to abuse this power. Tipton emphases the choice of language, Hogan the choice of topic and Flegg the genre of communication. They have all found their own way of navigating the world of craft through words and raised some very interesting considerations along the way.

Growing Pains: Childhood Illness in Ireland 1750-1950

Round table discussion on Growing Pains: A History of Childhood Illness in Ireland edited by Anne MacLellan (Stair Director) and Alice Mauger will be held at the Rotunda Hospital on the 20th March