– The purpose of this paper is to give an account of the Past in Mind project, an innovative project run by Herefordshire Mind and funded by the Heritage Lottery which explored the relationship between the disciplines of archaeology and mental health recovery. It aimed to use that unexpected connection to offer new perspectives on the interpretation of the past, to combat stigma associated with mental illness, and to support participants’ personal journeys to better mental health.
– The paper is an account of the development and operation of the project given by the project manager, with other contributions from project participants.
– The account of the project revealed that there was significant synergy between the processes of archaeology and the mental health recovery. The linkage between archaeology and mental health does had genuine value both for novel exploration of the past, and the exploration of personal understanding linked to mental health recovery.
– The paper is the first account of a partnership project between an archaeology service and mental health recovery project. There is evident potential to learn from the Past in Mind project, and to develop other history/archaeology/mental health recovery collaborative projects of this kind.
