Individual, Group, Institution: Transversality in the SHP Archive

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Individual, Group, Institution: Transversality in the SHP Archive: takes up an overlooked resource for the understanding of ethical modes of institutional care in contemporary conditions, and builds on recent renewed interest in the work of Institutional Analysis.The establishment of Institutional Psychotherapy in the wake of the liberation of France and Spanish Civil War saw the radical restructuring of insane asylums in antithesis to conditions witnessed in internment camps, with patients actively contributing to their running. From this, the practice of Institutional Analysis sees the institution, rather than the individual, as playing a primary role in the production of distress, and as such the necessary focus of analysis and change. Drawing from experiences and concepts introduced by key figures such as François Tosquelles (2012), Felix Guattari (2006) and Franz Fanon (2018) and a rare film archive of the practices drawing from them (Barrère, 1977; Laloux, 1961; Pain, 1986; Philibert, 1996) the project provides a paradigm for analysing the everyday practices that produce institutions in the contemporary context, and as such for tracing moments co-production within the SHP Archive project.SHP was established In 1975, when one of SHP's founders Stuart Clark, a homeless man who had slept rough and stayed in most of the London shelters, persuaded a housing association to let him use a short life property in Pimlico to house himself and five other homeless men. Today it is a London-wide charity that serves 7000 people annually in preventing homelessness and helping vulnerable and socially excluded people to transform their lives. It's archive - containing remnants of early housing struggles, mental health support work and creative projects co-produced with users of its housing and mental health services - has not, to date, been researched, catalogued or analysed. The charity has, since its inception, taken on a service user-led ethos and approach to questions of care. SHP's core values are unique in suggesting that client experiences shape the direction and governance of the charity and position the charity as a 'voice for change' at the intersection of issues related to housing, mental health and other forms of social precarity. This research project aims to analyse how SHP's commitment to co-production, client agency and broader social transformation register in the visual culture of care found in the archive and how this visual culture might support a deeper understanding among staff, users and the sector more widely of this important legacy. At a time when service-user led approaches to questions of care, are increasingly called upon to de-centre whiteness and ableist approaches, and critiques of imagery that reproduces 'victim', 'reform' and 'saviour' narratives of care abundant in the sector, the SHP archive offers important insights into the role of user-led approaches in broadening the social imagination of care and the institutions that perform it. This research is urgent insofar as - approaching the charity's 45th anniversary - founding members have yet to share their stories of the charity's origin and development. These oral histories are needed not only because original members are now in their 70's but because the collaborative constitution and history of SHP is often little known even to those living and working within it, making its values vulnerable to the ever-shifting tides of funder led paradigms of care and support. To date there has not been a formal record of the history of charity, and its origins in collective action. Beyond the direct benefits to SHP, the combination of cataloguing, user exploration and oral histories will constitute an invaluable resource in developing new mechanisms for engaging with archives through creative and curatorial methods, engaging both users, housing and mental health professionals and the wider public.