This paper reviews the challenges faced by a team at the Grace Eyre Foundation in running a coproduced oral history project during the pandemic. It examines the benefits and challenges of working online, comparing this to face-to-face approaches. For over 100 years, the Grace Eyre Foundation has provided support to people with learning…

We are five young people with learning disabilities who found out about the history of hospitals for people with learning disabilities in our area, and made a film about the project. The project taught us what life had been like for some people with learning disabilities only 30 years ago. It was very different to our lives; we have more choice,…

The following article outlines the methodological approach used to include people with learning disabilities as active participants in an oral history produced in Australia. The history sought to document life inside Kew Cottages, Australia's oldest and largest specialised institution for people with learning disabilities. This work furthers…

The history of long stay hospitals for people with learning disabilities has revealed that residents had ways of resisting their incarceration (Mitchell D, Traustadottir R, Chapman R, Townson L, Ingham N and Ledger S (editors) (2006) "Exploring experiences of advocacy by people with learning disabilities: testimonies of resistance").…

This is a short oral historical account of a former patient's working life inside and outside a learning disability hospital. After working in a variety of jobs inside the hospital, he obtained a pass to work outside the hospital, while still living there. After leaving, he continued to work in a variety of settings.

By means of documentary evidence and six in-depth interviews, this paper traces policy and practice relating to the education of visually impaired children with learning difficulties from 1900 to 1970. It reveals that if visually impaired children with learning difficulties were given an education at all, their needs were not usually met and they…

This paper uses oral history and documentary materials to develop a cross-cultural comparison of the experiences of two self-advocates who spent significant parts of their lives in learning difficulty institutions in England and Iceland. Anne Lewthwaite and Eyglo Ebba Hreinsdottir, born in the same era (1948-1950), were linked through the Open…