Bringing the Collections Closer at the Royal London Hospital
The collections that we care for at the Trust Archives are available to all in our searchroom — but we are always looking for new ways to make them accessible beyond the archives space. Last month, we installed four new interactive digital heritage units in waiting areas at the Royal London Hospital, so that patients and visitors can explore the amazing history of their hospital while they wait for appointments.
Content for the new displays was developed in collaboration with our Community Curators — a group of local residents and current and former patients and staff. They worked with us to explore historic collections relating to the hospital, originally founded in 1740, including documents, photos and objects, and picked items to include in the digital displays. Their work has helped us highlight new stories and perspectives on the long history of the hospital.
Patients and family members using the displays can navigate through objects and documents from the 1740s up to the 1990s, thematically and by date, via the large touch screens. As well as finding out more about the objects and documents picked by our Community Curators, visitors to the hospital will be able to read about the people who selected them, and why they connected with the items they chose or found them so fascinating.
Content is available English as well as three other locally spoken languages and for those just looking for an entertaining activity while they wait, there are also puzzles, quizzes and games and 3D scans of historic objects to explore. An animated history of the hospital, commissioned especially for the project from animator Alex Chilvers, also runs on the screens when they’re not in use — and you can enjoy it on our YouTube channel too!
For the archives team, the workshops with the Community Curators, during the first half of 2024, were a highlight of the project. For many it was their first time visiting an archives. After an introduction to archives and historic collections, they were able to explore the collections, and each person selected an item or items that they connected with or found interesting, to be included in the displays. They were then photographed with the items by archivist Ginny — their photographs and the connections and stories that they shared were used as part of the digital content. It was such a joy working with the Community Curators, and see them make often unexpected connections with items and objects from the collections. The archives team has also learned a lot from our fabulous project facilitator Anna Ravenscroft, about co-curation, community-centred projects, and how to make engaging interpretation, which we hope to bring to future similar projects.
The project was funded by from Barts Charity, whose support has enabled us to deliver what we believe are the first interactive digital heritage displays in a hospital in the UK, and build new networks and links in our local communities. Feedback from the user testing that we ran at the end of last year was really positive, and we have been delighted at the response from clinical staff in the areas where the displays have been installed. Comments like "It's really exciting for patients and families" have been typical, and we hope to be able to increase the number of display units across the hospital in the future.
We hope that giving patients and visitors a new way of exploring the hospital’s history while they wait for appointments will help them understand their own place in the story, make waiting a little more fun and interesting, and help to positively impact day-to-day life at the Trust’s largest hospital.