Day in, Day out: Reminiscence work in Monsall: Reading Race, Collecting Cultures - The Roving Reader Files

The Roving Reader Files category of blog posts is produced by Alison Newby (under the pseudonym The Roving Reader) in collaboration with Hannah Niblett (Collections Access Officer, Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre). The former provides the text and the latter provides the images. The Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Resource Centre is an open access University of Manchester facility, and The Roving Reader Files are designed as public engagement materials. The intention is to introduce research skills and terminology to the general user/reader in an entertaining yet informative manner by revealing hidden stories, making unusual connections and sharing insights into using the Centre's collection for research. The post "Day in, Day out: Reminiscence work in Monsall" is part of a series exploring the links between other institutions/collections and the race relations theme/holdings of the Centre. In this case, after participating in one of the Alzheimer Society's Dementia Friends information sessions (adopted by the University of Manchester as one of its social responsibility flagship programmes), I noted the similarity between the session's approach to dementia and that of a little-known pioneering Manchester organisation almost forty years before. The Gatehouse Project had used what are now known to be dementia-friendly techniques to collect the reminiscences of elderly ladies staying in two wards of Monsall Hospital, Manchester, valuing their contribution and giving them a voice which has too often been ignored. The resulting publication Day In, Day Out. Memories of North Manchester from Women in Monsall Hospital (edited by Patricia Duffin and Ailsa Cox) appeared in 1985 and forms part of the Centre's collection. Other blog posts in this series are: "Massacre of the Missionaries" ; "The Devil Man Springs to Life" ; "Tennyson Makiwane comes to London - but how?" ; "Meeting Daisy Makiwane..."