Positive History project: spring 2023 update

Positive History: preserving the archives of HIV/AIDS: care and testimony

The Positive History project was launched in 2020 following the successful award of a grant from the Wellcome Trust. The project aimed to make accessible three collections held at LMA relating to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and its aftermath and which document the pioneering medical treatment as well as the lived experience of those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, and the experiences of their carers, partners, relatives and friends.

The three archives are those of Mildmay Hospital, an institution which has its origins in the 1860s as a charity providing care to the local community but which in the 1980s became Europe’s first hospice dedicated to providing care to those with HIV and AIDS, the collection includes administrative records and patient case files; the second collection comprises 103 filmed interviews of people with HIV/AIDS, their families, partners and carers which were filmed by the National HIV Story Trust and thirdly, the archive of Positively UK (formerly Positively Women), a peer-led support charity which was founded in 1987 by two women who found that there were no peer-led services for women at that time.

Over eighteen months the project archivists have worked to make these records accessible for research. In order to make access points into the collection they have taken unique approaches to cataloguing, for example, the Mildmay Hospital patient case files are subject to access restrictions due to data protection legislation but in recognition of their importance one of the project archivists has undertaken to consult each file and extract information to create an anonymized research database which includes medical information detailing illnesses and medication but also extracting information which brings out the patients’ experience including details on living conditions, family circumstances and aims for the hospital admission.

The interviews filmed by the National HIV Story Trust, which amount to over 150 hours of harrowing, shocking and insightful footage from interviewees who agreed to publicly share their experiences, include primarily members of the LGBTQ+ community, but also heterosexual people, haemophiliacs infected with contaminated blood, as well as doctors, nurses and other healthcare professions and activists. These have been meticulously catalogued, transcribed, digitally edited and sensitivity-reviewed. This level of detailed cataloguing is very time-consuming but allows for the richness and the importance of the narratives contained within the collection to be made accessible and these interviews are now available for researchers to consult in the LMA Mediatheque.

The corporate records of Mildmay Hospital and the archives of Positively UK have been catalogued with file and collection level descriptions which are available to view on the LMA online collections catalogue.

The project has also had a strong outreach element, which has allowed us to reach a wide and varied audience and engage people unfamiliar with archives. These have included workshops attended by academics and Positively UK service users; skills sharing sessions with University student groups; over the summer of 2022 Project Archivist Chris Olver joined the LMA Learning and Engagement team at the Science Museum Late to celebrate 50 years of Pride and also presented at the LMA’s LGBTQ conference in December. In February 2023 the successful completion of the work to make the filmed interviews available was celebrated at a launch event held at the Curzon cinema, Soho and in April we will be holding an evening reception bringing together archivists, depositors, service users and academics to celebrate the successful completion of the project and the availability of these important archives.

To find out more about the project please see our Positive history pages.

The catalogue descriptions can be viewed on the LMA online collections catalogue under references: LMA/4814 (Positively UK), H82 (Mildmay Hospital) and LMA/4801 (National HIV Story Trust).