A new OU research network has been awarded £25,000 in Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funding to explore the use of arts in Victorian asylums, as well as its relevance today. The Psychiatry and the Arts in Nineteenth-Century Britain Network (PAN) will be led by Staff Tutor and Senior Lecturer in Music Dr Rosemary Golding.

The network will engage with health professionals, museum and heritage curators, and creative practitioners to find new ways in which the history of the arts and mental health can find meaning and impact in the modern day.

Dr Golding’s previous research focusses on institutional and cultural history of music, and the relationship between music and health. This new project presents a timely look at what we can learn from our ancestors about mental health care, commenting; “The Covid pandemic highlighted the emptiness left by a lack of access to the arts, and health services have become increasingly interested in ‘social prescribing’: formal inclusion of arts activities for health benefits.

“Such ideas are not new, however. Two-hundred years ago, changes in the ways mental health was treated led to the establishment of an enormous system of state-run asylums, at the heart of which were schemes of employment and recreation designed to help those often discarded by society, demonstrating that access to the arts is, and always has been, vital for health and wellbeing.”

Next steps

The new network will develop a partnership with the heritage sector, including the Crichton Trust and Museum of the Mind, Bethlem, and will culminate in a conference to be hosted by The Open University in Milton Keynes.

Dr Golding’s work on music and associated entertainments can be explored in her blog, and more information about the network can be found via the PAN website.