Yinka Shonibare’s striking and thought-provoking artwork ‘Refugee Astronaut’, on display in the recently opened ‘Being Human’ exhibition, embodies a complex message for modern times. The artist discusses the ideas behind it with Gwendolyn Smith.

As concern about climate change rightfully crescendos, it is hard to see Yinka Shonibare’s ‘Refugee Astronaut’ as anything other than some sort of dire omen from an environmentally catastrophic future. 

The life-size figure – the latest version of which is the flagship exhibit in Wellcome’s new permanent gallery ‘Being Human’ – is clad in moon boots, a spherical helmet and a spacesuit. The surrounding air seems to be too poisonous to inhale: the astronaut clutches a pair of breathing tubes attached to a tank on his or her back. Clearly, the traveller has upped sticks in a hurry: a tangle of possessions is hauled around in a ramshackle net.  

“It is in one sense a warning,” says Shonibare. “It’s trying to imagine what could happen if we don’t do something about rising water levels and the displacement of people.” 

The Turner Prize-shortlisted artist is known for exploring knotty themes, but he finds climate change a difficult subject to depict. “In general, the consequences are tangible but the process is intangible,” he says with a wry smile. This is also why it’s challenging to combat, he suggests. 

“It’s not immediately graspable. That’s why things are very slow politically. People see they can still get their breakfast. It doesn’t feel urgent. Whereas if you’re in a war situation you can see your house being destroyed and that you have to respond very quickly.” 

But urgent it is. Shonibare insists that the piece speaks to the present as well as the future, pointing out that the recent rise in asthma deaths has been linked to the air-pollution crisis.

‘Refugee Astronaut’ in Wellcome’s new permanent gallery ‘Being Human’.

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Refugee Astronaut by Yinka Shonibare CBE

This is not just a vision of a post-apocalyptic dystopia, then, but a startling sideways look at today’s world. Governments are failing to treat the environment as an emergency, says Shonibare. 

“Markets are still trading. And capitalism is still as strong as ever. Economics is based around the idea of growth, but we have finite resources. The two things can’t work together – you can’t have endless growth and no impact on the environment.” He shakes his head. “It’s still all about making as much money for your shareholders as you can.”

While ‘Refugee Astronaut’ is no doubt a striking response to environmental breakdown, it also throws up questions about race. Shonibare has long used Dutch wax fabrics to explore cultural heritage, and he employs the technique again here. Clothing the astronaut in fabric that is reminiscent of traditional Nigerian textiles subverts the notion of space exploration as a white endeavour, says Shonibare.

What you have here is a nomadic astronaut just trying to find somewhere that’s still habitable.

‘Refugee Astronaut’ wears moon boots.

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It challenges colonial connotations, too. “The refugee astronaut is the reverse of the colonial instinct of the astronaut – someone who is going out to conquer the world. What you have here is a nomadic astronaut just trying to find somewhere that’s still habitable.” 

In rendering the Everyman as a nomad, the piece also picks holes in the belief that certain people belong in certain places. “Nationalism is a very modern concept,” says Shonibare, adding that his long-held interest in the theme is partly a result of moving between London and Nigeria as a child. “Essentially we’re all nomads anyway, but people stake claim on places, which is a very modern idea – there’s nothing natural about that.” 

While the idea of belonging might be an erroneous one, we should do our best to look after the places we’ve settled in. “With environmental degradation we may not have alternative places to go, we may just have to wear astronaut suits because” – he laughs grimly – “because basically we’ve messed it all up.”

In raising sometimes conflicting ideas about climate change, identity, colonialism and globalisation, ‘Refugee Astronaut’ is packed with Shonibare’s trademark ambiguities. “On the one hand it could be read as the participation of a diverse community in scientific discovery. The ethnic astronaut, if you like. But also it could be read as an apocalyptic vision. It could be a warning or it could be a celebration.” 

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He sees his work as a kind of “poetic storytelling”: “It’s up to the audience to think about the various implications, I guess.” As a technique, this can be more effective at changing minds than straight polemic, he says. “I don’t think people respond unless they have some kind of fiction. Cinema, theatre, art: with those things you’re appealing to people on an emotional level. You’re not just reading out statistics.”

That being said, has the increasingly toxic public discourse tempted him to take a firmer political stance? On the contrary, he shoots back immediately. “The current political climate has exposed the problems involved in such rigid positions and where they can lead to. People jump to conclusions very quickly and then it causes chaos.” 

The ‘Being Human’ gallery is announced as Wellcome pledges to prioritise access, diversity and inclusion. Shonibare uses a wheelchair as a result of contracting transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord that paralysed one side of his body, when he was eighteen. How accessible are galleries and museums in general, I ask? 

“Galleries across London are very good. Public galleries. Not commercial galleries. Well, some commercial galleries are OK. The ones that have been renovated recently tend to be accessible, but if it’s a very old building you struggle. You can have ramps… they usually find some not-so-dignified way of getting into the buildings.” He gives a fluting chuckle. 

Up next in his schedule is an exhibition at the Stephen Friedman Gallery in London of a Mappa Mundi-inspired series of quilts. It looks at the depiction of cultures that don’t share the white, Western background of the Mappa Mundi’s creators; figures are rendered without heads or with just one leg, for instance. 

“The Mappa Mundi was a Google of its time because you could go and find out about the world while looking at it,” says Shonibare. “But the world view that they had was very… interesting.”

While Shonibare undercuts his politics with a slippery helping of poetry, does he want his art to change minds? He smiles. “I’m not deluded enough to think that people will see it and suddenly change their behaviour.” ‘Refugee Astronaut’ is just a succinct way of transmitting what science is already telling us about the state of the planet, he says. Nevertheless, he’s proud that work like his can provoke necessary conversations. “I want my art to make people think.”

Gwendolyn Smith is a freelance culture journalist based in London.

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Gwen Smith

Gwendolyn Smith

@Gwendolyn_Smith

Author

Thomas is a London-based photographer working for Wellcome. He thrives when collaborating on projects and visual stories. He hails from Italy via the North-east of England.  

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Thomas SG Farnetti

Thomas S G Farnetti

Photographer

Interview

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Find out what led Yinka Shonibare to create the compelling artwork ‘Refugee Astronaut’.

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Dr Hannah J Elizabeth

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Read the hidden stories of our curators, archivists, conservators and more.

Behind the Scenes

Meet the climate emergency

Works by Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery subvert and play with ideas on those most serious of subjects: illness and death. Co-curator George Vasey describes how he honoured their approaches – and added a touch of well-deserved glamour.

On the face of it, ‘Misbehaving Bodies’ may seem a jarringly playful title for a show about chronic illness. But it sums the show up perfectly because in it, Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery use their work to question the authority of the medical establishment and mischievously subvert clichés around illness and death. 

“If we’re misbehaving, whose rules are we breaking?” asks curator George Vasey. “That’s the question that art and museums can pose. Misbehaving in this context is about reclaiming something we’ve seen portrayed in a negative way.”

Through text and photography Spence explored having her body treated proprietorially by the medical profession after being diagnosed with cancer in 1982, when she was in her fifties, while contemporary artist Ashery uses her film series ‘Revisiting Genesis’ to look at modern ideas about death.

It didn’t feel right to put my voice into the show.

Understandably, Vasey has been asked about the politics of having a male curator working on an exhibition that is primarily about women’s experiences of illness. “Spence was quite explicit in her will that she didn’t want to be in shows that excluded men. She made much of her work in collaboration with men and through her feminism believed that it was the job of men and women working together to think about patriarchy,” he says. 

Nevertheless, it has informed how he’s approached the narration of the show. “I’m not a woman and I’ve never had breast cancer, but I can create space for people with that lived experience to talk on the material. It didn’t feel right to put my voice into the show, it felt more important to bring other people's voices into the conversation.”

In fact, the exhibition was initiated by fellow Wellcome Collection curator Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz before she went on maternity leave and was inspired by the organisation’s purchase of works by Jo Spence.

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George Vasey explores the Misbehaving Bodies exhibition

Gratifyingly, ‘Misbehaving Bodies’ is a rich polyphony of responses to illness from other artists, people who have been unwell, and healthcare professionals. The guidebook contains a series of round-table discussions about, among other points, how it feels to be diagnosed with cancer, and what healthcare professionals deem to have been the most significant development in cancer care during their career. The latter was the suggestion of the cancer-care charity Maggie’s Centre; experts there said it was essential to get healthcare workers to speak back to the testimony of those living with a diagnosis of cancer.

Getting insight into how medicine has evolved was heartening, says Vasey. “Things are changing; there are developments constantly. It’s not just a conversation stuck in the Eighties.”

While collaborating with Ashery was a conversation, presenting Spence’s photography and scrapbooks came with the uncertainty of working on someone’s estate. “Jo Spence was highly specific about the way her work was shown. A lot of what I’ve been doing is trying to get to know people who worked with her, and trying to embed myself in that era.” 

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Vasey spoke to her collaborator, Rosy Martin, to try to make sure ‘Misbehaving Bodies’ reflected Spence’s wishes as much as possible. Spence co-founded the Hackney Flashers, a socialist-feminist collective that looked at the representation of women’s labour, both domestic and in the workplace. Speaking to Martin made Vasey realise the importance of foregrounding Spence’s socialist politics. 

“Her diagnosis of breast cancer and her work on healthcare was a continuation of her political work, and as such she didn’t want t-shirts with her work on or badges or any merchandise.” 

This doesn’t mean the show is spartan, though; Vasey decided to give Spence’s work an overdue shot of glamour. “I wanted the show to look really beautiful and elegant. When Jo was alive she would often show the work in libraries and community centres. There weren’t many galleries showing this kind of work. So when it came into Wellcome Collection I wanted to do it justice.” 

But what would she have made of it? “I don’t know, but it felt to me that she would have loved having her name as a mini Hollywood sign. It’s really funny.” 

There are other touches of levity, too. The hubs where visitors can watch ‘Revisiting Genesis’ are strewn with soft furnishings, such as a giant teddy bear. “A lot of people are coming into the show and saying it’s not what they expected. Our job is to challenge thinking about health as an institution so it felt important to use humour and playfulness to disarm people.” 

While the unusual furniture serves a practical purpose – Vasey wanted to create different ways of sitting in the space – it also links to Spence’s commentary on feeling infantilised by the medical establishment. 

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A scrapbook with a photograph of Prince Charles and Princess Diana on the front that Spence has graffitied with the word ‘CANCER’ is among Vasey’s favourite exhibits. It nods to Spence’s wider interest in Diana: she mentions her in her academic work when discussing the construction of class and gender. 

Vasey suggests Diana is also pertinent to Ashery’s work on how our digital life has exacerbated the commercialisation of life and death. “Tony Blair called Diana ‘the people’s princess’, nodding to how she caught a new mood of emotionalism within the public sphere. What social media has done is heightened a demand for an emotionalism. That’s what Oreet’s interested in. The way that the public becomes saturated with the personal, and thus personal narratives become monetised.” 

Vasey archived Spence’s work while completing his MA degree, but his link with her is about more than academic history. “Her work deals with being displaced as a child and coming from a working-class background, feeling like a bit of an imposter and dealing with class shame,” he says. “I’d never really seen a photographer articulate that before. That meant so much to me, coming from a similar working-class background.”

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The show’s primary aim was to prompt conversations about the taboo subjects of illness and death. But it also has plenty to say about how we live. “The works talk about different forms of marginalisation, from what it means to be a person of colour, to being a migrant, to being working class. As Oreet says in ‘Revisiting Genesis’, how we die is how live, only more so. The economies of marginalisation are amplified in illness. When someone’s poor, they become poorer.”

Ultimately, though, ‘Misbehaving Bodies’ is shot through with a sense of joy and celebration. Both Spence and Ashery look at legacy and what happens after somebody dies rather than seeing death as the final stage.

This is why Vasey chose to highlight ambiguous works such as the final episode in Ashery’s ‘Revisiting Genesis’, which shows a white-suited aerialist on a white background, and an image from Spence’s ‘The Final Project’ depicting her floating body. “They both deal with death, but in a very symbolic and metaphorical way,” he says. “They feel like more of a comma than a full stop.”

This article originally omitted to mention the role of co-curator Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz. It has now been corrected.

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Curator George Vasey and the Misbehaving Bodies Exhibition

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Discover how curator George Vasey honoured the approaches of Jo Spence and Oreet Ashery, who mischievously subvert clichés around illness and death.

Inside the mind of George Vasey, co-curator of Misbehaving Bodies

The curators of the ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ exhibition talk about how stealthily our brains trick us, how hard magicians work to make their acts look effortless, and the show’s contemporary relevance.

The curators of Wellcome Collection’s ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ exhibition, A R Hopwood and Honor Beddard, know that responses to the show, which explores the psychology of magic, will be intensely personal. 

Performances of tricks aren’t only a crucial part of what’s on display – how the exhibition speaks to visitors echoes the magician-audience relationship, too. “My main ambition was for the show to be a call to critical thinking,” says Hopwood. “But the meaning is ultimately completed by the viewer – in the same way that the encounter between the magician and the audience completes the trick.”

Although the show’s concerns have a contemporary resonance – particularly in hints at the link between our susceptibility to deception and the current era of fake news – the curators wanted to produce topical work without, in Beddard’s words, “smacking people over the head and doing something that’s painfully worthy”. 

The only overt reference to politics is a study into doctored photographs of Barack Obama and George W Bush, which shows how fake memories align along belief systems. “That felt like a very clear way to link the psychology of belief that we look at in the first section into something that is really current without mentioning Brexit or Trump,” laughs Hopwood.

More: How Western magicians draw on the mystique of the East to bolster their illusion. 

They also developed a show-don’t-tell mentality: interactive challenges crop up throughout. These include a video where your attention is diverted from a gorilla that enters the shot by a task that focuses on the other figures on the screen, and a virtual card trick that shows how magicians influence an audience’s decisions without them realising. These let visitors physically experience how fallible the human mind can be. 

“Through the show’s narratives, doubts and questions will hopefully start to build up in visitors’ minds,” says Beddard. “Then it’s not much of a stretch to go from thinking, okay, I’m actually really quite vulnerable in terms of my perception. If I know that these scenarios play out in contexts other than magic, where does that leave me?” 

Crucially, ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ isn’t about mocking human gullibility. “We didn’t want anybody to be able to point their fingers at people and say: look how silly they are for being deceived,” Beddard adds. “You need to realise that it happens almost without you noticing.” 

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A R Hopwood, curator of Smoke and Mirrors

The show revels in knotty contradictions. For example, one of Hopwood’s favourite stories is of psychical researcher Richard Hodgson, who had a “really extraordinary ability to root out fraud” but who also became entranced by Boston medium Leonora Piper. 

Then there’s the broader question of spiritual catharsis versus evidence and science, and the cognitive dissonance that enables people to value both simultaneously. “If you look at something like the posters by the magicians the Davenport brothers, it’s clear they’re advertising a piece of theatre,” says Beddard. “And yet people found spiritual catharsis within it, despite knowing it was staged. How you can hold those seemingly incompatible views at the same time was a big question.” 

Moreover, showing both sides of the picture was important, such as when exploring Houdini’s exposure of supposed medium Margery Crandon. Being in touch with Crandon’s granddaughter enabled them to scrutinise her motivations – did she genuinely believe she was psychic, for instance? – alongside Houdini’s perspective. 

To give a sense of Crandon’s experience of events, there are cases displaying her personal scrapbooks and correspondence, including a fascinating 1924 letter from Houdini arranging a test of her act, where he assures her that she won’t be subjected to “any inconvenience of physical discomfiture”.

Naturally, the curators each have favourite exhibits. For Beddard, it’s the eye-grabbing posters. “It really shows what a hold magic had over people.” She’s also particularly fond of the Tommy Cooper stage plan, and loved her visit to his archives at the V&A where she witnessed the research and planning that went into his work. “It brought home the thousands of hours that go into producing an act that appears effortless when you’re on stage.” 

Meanwhile, Hopwood favours the John Nevil Maskelyne lantern slides. “He’s the first example of the magician-investigator that you look at, and here he is, this very smartly attired Victorian gent, tied to a chair, showing how you can create spiritualistic effects through simple acts of escapology. They’re really startling and vivid images and we’re not sure they’ve been seen much before.”  

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Honor Beddard, curator of Smoke and Mirrors

Psychology, storytelling and the paranormal

One of the greatest curatorial challenges was reducing the story down to its key narratives. “You realise that at the heart of this matter is the psychology, and then you have to think about how various figures fit into the psychology rather than making it about them specifically,” says Beddard. 

The duo’s varied backgrounds helped here. Beddard appreciated the opportunity to ‘mine’ Hopwood’s rich body of research (he is behind the touring exhibition ‘False Memory Archive’ – which, like ‘Smoke and Mirrors’, explores memory and misdirection – as well as being involved with Goldsmiths, University of London’s research into paranormal beliefs). Meanwhile, she drew on her seven years of storytelling experience as an in-house curator at Wellcome to hone the structure. 

Magicians and psychologists are arguably investigating the same thing – they just talk about it in different ways.

“Our expertise lies in exhibition-making, storytelling, communicating. It’s important you always keep one foot outside the expert camp so you can put yourself in the mind of the visitor.”

A vital message of the show concerns the unexpected parallels between magicians, psychics and scientists. “Magicians and psychologists are arguably investigating the same thing – they just talk about it in different ways and use different language,” says Beddard. Hopwood agrees, referencing a period in the late 19th century that saw an overlap between beliefs in spiritualism, the growth of the entertainment industry and the founding of new scientific organisations.  

“Across magicians and scientists, you had the whole range from non-believers, the uncertain and believers. They all shared a faith in science to be able to root out where there was fraud.” Scientists trusted their powers of observation but were also taken in by what mediums were doing; it wasn’t until magicians intervened that trickery was revealed. “It’s an early example of interdisclipinarity,” says Hopwood.  

While the show isn’t about dividing people into good guys and bad guys, it is fairly clear on one point: evidence does matter. Nevertheless, the route to rigour can be surprising. “The best sort of evaluation of evidence could be through fairly unexpected means,” says Hopwood. “Through a collaboration of magicians and scientists, for instance.”

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Honor Beddard and A R Hopwood, curators of Smoke and Mirrors

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How the magician’s assistant creates the illusion

Go inside the world of onstage magic with performer Naomi Paxton.

Research primary source material relating to the sciences of the mind.

Smoke and Mirrors: The Psychology of Magic

Explore the links between psychology and magic in our exhibition, on until 15 September 2019.

The curators of ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ reveal the stories behind the exhibits, and the intriguing truths the show confronts us with.

Inside the minds of A R Hopwood and Honor Beddard

Academics on hallucinogenics, kids sniffing glue, and Scientologists recruiting drug users keen to kick the habit. Revealing stories about experiences of drugs from every angle are brought to light in an archive recently acquired by Wellcome. Archivist Anthony Day talks about attracting readers of all kinds to this fascinating collection.

You wouldn’t think an archive about drug addiction and recovery would have much of a light side, but nestled among the sobering stories in Wellcome’s recently acquired DrugScope collection are some unexpectedly amusing tales. One conference report sees a group of philosophers and theologians taking a decidedly ‘Method’ approach to their research on the effect of psychedelic drugs.  

“It’s hilarious – these really well-mannered professors end up taking drugs and talking about how extraordinary the carpet looks,” says archivist Anthony Day. 

The stark contrast isn’t just between the seemingly buttoned-up dons and the world of psychedelic stimulation – but between the story and the other narratives in the collection, too. “You have academic engagement with drugs and spirituality and the betterment of the soul and so on, and then on the other hand you’ve got a very down-to-earth picture of working-class Britain through information about glue-sniffing.” 

Day believes this breadth is one of the collection’s greatest draws. DrugScope was the leading UK organisation representing those working in the drugs field, and its archive, acquired by Wellcome after DrugScope closed in 2015, encompasses an enormous range of material – mainly from the UK and the US – including pamphlets, conference papers and government publications. 

More: The blurry lines between safe and dangerous, legal and illegal.

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Anthony Day with an item from the DrugScope archive

The glue-sniffing subject matter forms one of the most interesting narratives in the collection. “There’s a lot created by working-class youths that’s about their engagement with glue-sniffing and how that intersects with their lack of opportunity and police harassment,” says Day. “It’s very much a picture of Thatcher’s Britain in the 1980s.” 

He believes it highlights the moral panic around the issue at the time, along with the chasm between those taking drugs and those telling them not to. Take the zine penned by young people who had been expelled from school, in which they mull over their experiences of doing glue. “It’s very candid and honest, and captures a very particular voice – everything’s written in a phonetic dialect style,” says Day.  

Material like this forms a sharp contrast with educational resources for teachers aimed at drug prevention, thereby exposing the lacunae in such initiatives. “They’re saying good things – of course, it’s not a good idea to do glue – but there’s an element of not really tackling the reason why people choose to do drugs in the first place.” 

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Aside from the sheer range of stories it contained, what surprised Day most about the archive? “The one thing I didn’t know about is an organisation called Narconon.” He came across brochures advertising Narconon’s services to people with drug-addiction problems. 

When he started reading these, it became clear it was a Scientology network. As with other materials created by rehab services, he says, “There’ll be a hook or a particular method and they’ve got it sussed, and can say, ‘This is how we’re going to help.’” The brochures “offered a ‘better way’, an idealistic and, in a sense, appealing philosophy”. 

Stealthy advertising tactics are also apparent if you look at the graphic-design element of some of the American material in the archive. Day was particularly absorbed by the use of 1960s’ and 1970s’ psychedelic style. “That design was very grounded in the psychedelic experience, and it’s a very pro-psychedelic thing, and those images were designed to stimulate you when you were high.” 

Unsurprisingly, then, he was tickled to find it being used by the US government to present an anti-drugs message; they’d cannily commandeered it with the hope of appealing to the same demographic. “It was interesting to see it both grounded in the counter-cultural moment and then also adopted by a kind of opposite ideology telling kids that life is this wonderful psychedelic journey and you don’t need drugs,” he says. 

“What is being said now was also being said 30 or 40 years ago.” 

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The collection also has plenty to say about the history of the legalisation of drugs for clinical or therapeutic use. Looking at historic conversations around cannabis chimes with how the drug is becoming more accepted today, with cannabidiol (CBD) now found in everything from cosmetics to beer. 

“What is being said now was also being said 30 or 40 years ago,” says Day. “Clearly, it takes time to shift such a monolithic idea. Politicians have to find the right time to discuss these things: they’re up against Middle England and the Brexit brigade – you have a very fearful demographic that you have to appeal to.”

Day also came across “a big culture of newsletters and pamphlets – short things that were essentially blog posts or articles you might post online”. This offers a glimpse into how drugs professionals communicated before the internet. “It shows how these grassroots organisations were forming forum-like communities among their readership – and also how that readership could interact through letters.” 

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What drew him to the archive originally? He says it spoke to his academic interests – in his history degree he looked at marginal perspectives and protest culture. Then there was its wide-ranging appeal. “The opportunity to reach out to people and bring more diverse audiences into the archive… well, the DrugScope material is a very good hook for that.”  

Could it help realise his passion for breaking down barriers to archives? He thinks so, citing how it speaks to people across different disciplines, from drama to art to design. More than that, Day would love to attract people who have no experience with archives at all. “There’s so much in the collection that isn’t necessarily academic and can be enjoyed in a non-academic way.”

His own experience of coming to academia slightly later in life has given him a clue as to how to make that happen. Although he didn’t become an archivist until his 30s – after an access course at 31, followed by a history degree and the necessary training before joining Wellcome – he had a lifelong interest in collecting. But when he scrolled archives online, he found “everything was just a dead end”. 

People with jobs like his have the power to change this, he says. “It’s important as an archivist to articulate what some of that stuff is and why it’s interesting.” And, most crucially, he says, “just that it’s there”.

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Anthony Day with the DrugScope archive

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Academics on hallucinogenics, kids sniffing glue, and Scientologists recruiting drug users keen to kick the habit. Delve into Wellcome’s recently acquired DrugScope archive.

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Explore stories inspired by the objects, manuscripts and more in our archives.

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