Objects of the Mind: Using film to explore the entangled histories of media and mental health

This article presents the findings of an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project, Objects of the Mind: engaging publics in the material cultures of media and mental health (AH/W002140/1), which was co-investigated by academics at the University of East Anglia and Manchester University and curators from across the Science Museum Group (SMG). Through this co-investigation we sought to the harness the tangibility of the SMG object collections and accessibility of popular films (supplied by partners StudioCanal) to engage new audiences for our research on the interactions of psychiatry and cinema. From the museum perspective, we sought to use this research to ask new questions and tell new stories about the SMG objects, and to foster cross-collection dialogue between medicine (Science Museum) and media (National Science and Media Museum) collections. We will discuss a range of events, activities and outputs we delivered towards these aims, but focus particularly on three new films we produced that (re)combined museum objects, feature film clips and expert interviews to tell new, enhanced or entangled stories about and across the collections. We will use these three new short films to demonstrate three key intersections the project fostered: intersecting collections; intersecting histories; and intersecting disciplines.