Heritage and Wellbeing

ReMIND is a two-year research project hosted within Media, Culture, Heritage at Newcastle University. The project is a study on the adaptive reuse of former asylums into museums, chiefly focusing on ‘mind museums’.

A mind museum, as defined by the project, is a museum hosted in the former premise of a psychiatric hospital, which has the primary mission to foster critical reflections on the histories and contemporary problems of managing mental health in society.

About the research project

In particular, the research delves into the complex relationship existing in these specific museums between the cultural and curatorial project of the museum, the architectural intervention of adaptive reuse onto its hosting building, and the exhibition design. It investigates if and how these affect one other – do they work together and determine visitor experience, and with which effects?  

To do so, the study conjoins complementary disciplinary approaches from architecture, museum and exhibition design and museum studies. ReMIND is the first study on mind museums; its aim is to develop all-round insights into this museum type, their work and potentials. This may be relevant for informing reuse policies for former asylums, as well as in the study of other museums alike. 

The project has been paused since July 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak; it is going to restart by the end of the year and will end in December 2021.  To read more about the project see: https://research.ncl.ac.uk/remind/

About the film

As part of the project, Francesca Lanz and Chiara Bombardieri curated a video by Alec Boyd, in collaboration with the Museo di Storia della Psichiatria di Reggio Emilia and the Biblioteca Scientifica Carlo Livi (Italy).

Entitled Refugee, it is based on a selection of historical records conserved at the archive of the former San Lazzaro psychiatric hospital in Reggio Emilia (Italy). It contributed to the World Refugee Day 2020  events organised by the Centre for Heritage Research in collaboration with the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience , focusing on war, displacement, human rights and mental health.

It explores the lives of a group of psychiatric patients who had been displaced at the San Lazzaro asylum from other institutes located on the eastern Italian war border during the First World War. “Refugee” talks about fragility and care, as well as social segregation, control and custody, inviting us to reflect on contemporary mental health problems in relation to migration and the struggles for a better life: