IAA Project type: Networking grant

Duration of project: May - October 2023

Partner organisation: Wild in the City

MOLA staff leading IAA grant: Ayesha Purcell (lead) and Katrina Gargett (co-lead)

Individual partners: Culture24 and Harbour Counselling

Project aims

This working group aims to establish the feasibility of using archaeological storytelling as a therapeutic tool to support the development of emotional awareness and empathic skills in young people, through in-depth workshops facilitating multi-disciplinary collaboration.  

Audiences

  • Heritage engagement professionals  
  • Therapeutic professionals

Project Plan

This project borrows the phrase ‘imaginative understanding’ from historian E.H. Carr, who asserted that ‘history cannot be written unless the historian can achieve some kind of contact with the mind of those about whom he is writing’ (Carr 1961. 24). For our purposes, we exchange ‘history’ for ‘archaeology’, to recognise the parallel imperative on archaeologists to connect with past peoples to gain insight into human experience. The goal of this connection is not to directly feel what a past person may have felt, but to imaginatively glimpse the world these past peoples experienced from standing besides them whilst using analytical academic skills.    

This project suggests there is a link between Carr’s ‘imaginative understanding’ and what the forensic psychiatrist Gwen Adshead refers to as ‘radical empathy’. She explains ‘radical empathy’ as a parallel emotional connection and recognition of human experience, that balances ‘the willingness to get up close while maintaining both detachment and discernment’ (Adshead 2021). Adshead poses that ‘the present imbalance between condemnation and compassion [in society] might be righted if the methods my colleagues and I use in working with violent offenders were implemented at a societal level’ (Adshead 2021).    

This project asks whether archaeological storytelling and interpretation can be used as a method to exercises the muscles used to form the empathetic and emotional connections that enable people to relate more compassionately.  

Through a series of networking workshops, a team drawn from heritage engagement, therapeutic and mental health services, and young people’s services will rigorously interrogate whether archaeology’s use in this context can be meaningful, impactful, and above all, safe. If this network concludes archaeological storytelling can positively contribute, then this research would form the basis for a collaborative pilot project working directly with young people.

Project outputs

  • Multidisciplinary professional network  
  • Collaborative answers to key questions  
  • Report synthesising workshop conclusions