It was during a 5 minute stint playing Pinocchio in a primary school drama class that it became evident I wasn’t particularly interested in the subject of good. And whilst the puppet and I initially shared this inclination our tales were not to end quite so symmetrically.  Filled with ennui at the thought of being shackled to this wooden make-good-er for an entire play I begged my teacher to return me to the original role I had abandoned. So, with a sigh I snuggled back into the character of Fire-eater and spent the rest of our rehearsal tormenting little puppets.

No, I did not spend my adolescence torturing kittens. No, I am not a member of any deviant online forums. And in answer to my sister’s question - No, I have no intention of becoming pen pals with an incarcerated serial killer. Nor do I plan on marrying said incarcerated serial killer. I am just really interested in evil. Sorry Mum.

If the past two years of research have taught me anything it is that this subject makes most people rather uncomfortable. It’s either that or my experience of averted gazes, nervous laughter and backwards stepping is connected to my personal hygiene or perceived mental health status. But I’m all in favour of blaming it on evil. Aren’t we always.

My practice-led research is concerned with strategies for constructing more productive dialogues with the subject of evil through art. However, I must confess to having self-indulgently reveled in a few cathartic orgies of hatred and horror, facilitated by this umbrella term, in my time. Let’s be frank here, there’s much pleasure to be had in booing a baddy and tut tut tutting a terrorist.

Which brings me to the subject of the fairytale and it’s realms of darkness that we so delight in. At a lecture on the positive psychology of fairytales at Edinburgh University, Dr. Licia Masoni argued that the genre performs as a kind of daydreaming, catharsis and collective analysis session that provides its audience with the ability to engage with the taboos and traumas encountered there, but at a safe distance. And she is not the only one to take up this position in praise of the fairytale; among others Bruno Bettelheim, Sheldon Cashdan and Marina Warner have written on the subject of its capacity to help us cope and rationalise distressing relationships and circumstances in our lives.

But with the likes of Disney at their helm, children’s experiences of fairytales have been taking a detour away from the dark and productive towards the, well, simply delightful. Perhaps in this case the emphasis should be on the ‘simply’. Don’t get me wrong, Walt, ‘cos we’ve had some good times and tone-deaf sing-alongs but I’ve got an army of cruel stepmother’s, wolves, witches, ogres, giants and other equally heinous bogeys that would like a word with you... and the kids. That’s if they can pry the red tape from their mouths.

I am not saying that there isn’t value or a need for censorship to protect our children from inappropriate subject matter. But there are some things, disquieting and disturbing as they are, which need to be said and fairytales are one of those places to say them. We do the fairytales and ourselves a great disservice when we sanitise them. The darkness is there for a reason, and there is much to be seen within it once you let your eyes adjust.

Like several At Home in Scotland participants, I attended storytelling training sessions in May. The workshop leader, Dr Michael Williams, argued that storytelling was one of the best ways for researchers to communicate their findings, but I was not sure how storytelling might relate to my research. I study early nineteenth-century charities and spend a lot of time reading their administrative records. These records often contain ‘personal’ stories but there is something unsatisfactory about them. Reports of the Edinburgh Society for the Relief of the Destitute Sick, for example, described the lives of the individuals aided by that charity, but these descriptions were limited, formulaic and sanitised. They were included merely to tell donors that the charity assisted the ‘right’ sort of people. The At Home in Scotland Project has demonstrated how storytelling can capture complexity and diversity, but nineteenth-century philanthropists often seemed more interesting in producing a single narrative, with little reflection on the individuality of those they aided. 

This somewhat bleak conclusion raises a question: why would I be interested in these organisations at all? Thinking about this made me realise how stories have been central to my research. My overall motivation and my specific research questions have been greatly influenced by personal accounts written by the recipients of charity. It would be naïve to think that personal narratives provide unrestricted insight into the ‘real’ experiences of their authors, but they do highlight the multifaceted nature of historical charities. They reveal the many interpersonal interactions among donors, managers, employees and inmates, which characterised these institutions. They also emphasise how charities often had a profound effect on their wider societies.

Bella Aronovitch’s little known memoir Give it Time, An Experience of Hospital 1928-32, is probably my favourite example of such a story, even though it is set almost a century after the time period that I study. It details the four years that she spent in London hospitals following a failed appendectomy. Aronovitch’s vivid descriptions of contemporary voluntary hospitals encouraged me to discover more about how these institutions functioned. I want to find out how charitable hospitals affected the lives of all those associated with them, including patients, administrators and medical staff. The hospitals’ reliance on voluntary contributions meant that their doctors were under severe pressure to discharge patients like Aronovitch, who were seen as a drain on resources. Give it Time highlighted the power that the hospitals’ lay governors exercised, it described the deference that they expected from both doctors and patients and it showed how individual patients could become problematic ‘statistics’. Being shuttled between five different hospitals made Aronovitch’s experience unusual, but this is what made it so valuable. It allowed her to provide a fascinating comparison of the standards of care in different contemporary institutions. Focusing on a single personal experience allowed the book to successfully communicate the gravity of the decisions made in these hospitals. Two of the institutions described in the book were former Poor Law infirmaries. They mainly catered for incurable patients, and their doctors almost decided that Aronovitch, too, was beyond help. Only her transfer to yet another charitable hospital led to her cure and eventual discharge. Aronovitch’s story deserves to be more widely known and I highly recommend Give it Time to anyone who wants to find out about healthcare before the NHS. It was through reading personal accounts like these that I realised that pre-Welfare State charities were fascinating, complex institutions that are worth exploring further.    

Give it Time, An Experience of Hospitals, 1928-32 was published in 1974 and can be accessed in the National Library of Scotland, extracts from it and from other accounts of hospital care can be found in Deborah Brunton (Ed), Health, Disease and Society In Europe 1800-1930: A Source Book (Manchester, 2004).  

Joe Curran (@JokeCurran)

Is the migrant’s journey that different from the hero’s quest? A call to adventure, a descent into the unknown, the movement from light to shade, into the dark night of the soul. Documentary film can play an important role in illuminating these journeys, capturing the physical and psychological trials along the way. If one is lucky, one may even be able to follow the transformative journey such survivors make, ascending out of the belly of the whale into a world that is much altered, not in the physical sense, but through the lens of experience. While the migrant makes the journey home, he may be filled with forewarnings, lessons, and a renewed hope for redemption, while loved ones sense that they he has been altered in some way irrevocably. While some, never return: the trials too great, the darkness too seductive - caught in-between two worlds interminably.

At Home in Scotland reminds me of the role myth plays in our storytelling history, despite the constantly evolving mediums of our oral histories, printed tomes and visual ethnographies. Documentary film is one of the most recent innovations in how we tell non-fiction stories, yet the narrative structures remain ancient, and archetypal.  While a part of my research seeks to uncover the hidden stories experienced by survivors of forced labour and human trafficking, I am conscious that these stories do not necessarily start and end in tragedy. Behind each story, a person lives. A person who is not defined by a single, traumatic experience, but who brings with them years of lived experiences, a crowd of voices, and a range of sentiments, ideas and contradictions. They are not static, nor are their stories. And like the hero, they are experiencing a complex journey that we as academics, filmmakers and spectators may be fortunate enough to witness at a point in its cycle. We may have a singular snapshot that captures this quest, but ultimately they will experience it alone, and continue alone.

Stories that illuminate the issue of modern-day slavery in the UK are growing exponentially. Yet these investigations that uncover gross human rights violations and call into question the moral integrity of our citizenry are not easy viewing. While I argue they are necessary, it is equally important for the storyteller to take her listeners on a truthful journey: no singular event happens without causality, no one person represents the whole. We are responsible for the telling of the story, not the story itself, and it is here where the use of generalisations may not be reckless, but also dangerous.

As a witness to stories, we can only faithfully document the experience. And despite our love of myths and our need for heroes, we cannot alter the journey to suit our appetite for tragic pathos or happy endings. In our rush to elaborate on an important issue, we must not forget this is someone’s else story we are narrating. In our efforts to recall, inscribe and sing another’s experiences, we must be conscious that our role, in the end, must remain where it began - in the chorus.

Mei-Ling McNamara @MLMcNamara

How do you help kids understand money? Encourage them to create it themselves.

Explaining the workings of money and finance to
children would seem to be a virtually impossible task. After all, how many adults can say that they grasp the mechanics of stock and bond trading or currency speculation, let alone the opaque realm of credit derivatives and insurance swaps?

As the language used to describe the world of finance suggests, however, money and markets possess fantastical, imaginary elements with which children have a natural affinity.

This is a world populated by magnificent beasts (stock market “bulls” and “bears”), magical beings (the “wizards” and “sorcerers” who create new investment vehicles), and fearsome monsters (corporate “vampires” and “zombie banks”). 

Conjuring up a gallery of enchanted figures that might have emerged from the pages of J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, or Stephenie Meyer, financial metaphors speak directly to the imaginations of young people.

And this affinity is not simply a matter of language. We talk about finance in these ways because the abstractions of money and other credit instruments so often strike us as imaginary or make believe – qualities with which children are more at ease than most adults.

Children are fascinated by the distance between fantasy and reality. Not necessarily more credulous than grown ups, they’re nonetheless willing and able to grasp how things that don’t
really exist may have powerful effects on the ways in which people think, feel and behave. As such, they may be better placed to understand finance than their parents.

That’s the thinking behind “Show Me the Money,” a free smart phone and tablet app targeted at children and teenagers that aims to stimulate thinking about the imaginative aspects of
finance.

Tied to the exhibition, “Show Me the Money: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present,” which opened at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland last month, the app allows users to create their own bank notes, test their nerve in a stock market investment game and design outrageous outfits like the ones worn by pro traders on the floors of futures exchanges.

The design of money is more important today than it has ever been. Because, since the 1970s, currency has not been “backed” by gold, central banks like the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve have had to try all the harder to convince us that money is worthy of our belief: that it is based on strong, solid, dependable foundations.

Bank notes call on the power and authority of presidents, queens and even God. They showcase respected historical figures, carry resounding Latin mottos, bear the signatures of important officials and feature grand buildings and proud national emblems like flags, crests and symbolic
animals.

As the “Show Me the Money” exhibition makes clear, artists who use money in their work often mock banks’ attempts to produce notes that command belief and respect. Artists scrawl political slogans over real notes, create fake notes bearing their own faces or cover their designs with the names of invented banks or denominations that are crazily high or low.

By providing a fun and intuitive means of designing money for the “Bank of Me” (complete with “selfied” portrait), the “Show Me the Money” app encourages users – young and old – to think about how symbols and icons generate or subvert value, and harnesses their creativity and imagination to help them become savvier about the financial values in which they are more and more obligated to believe.

Children’s love of role play also lends itself to learning about money and finance. Within the app, “Bulls and Bears,” a simple stock investment game, gives users an opportunity to experience the unpredictability of the trading floor and the surge of “animal spirits” that can turn an optimistic “bull” into a pessimistic “bear” in a heart beat. And “Dress for Success” allows users to kit themselves out for the role of City slicker or Wall Street mogul by designing one of the garish trading jackets worn by futures traders, and encourages them to think about how the ways in which financial professionals present themselves shape how they are perceived in the wider world.

Users of the app can share their bank note and trading jacket designs with friends and with the “Show Me the Money” exhibition. Selected submissions will appear in the gallery and on the exhibition’s web site. So to “show me the money!” let me add another exhortation: show us your money!

The exhibition, “Show Me the Money: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present” is on view at the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland until 30 August, and then tours. More details at imageoffinance.com.

The “Show Me the Money” app is available to download for free for iPhone and iPad from the Apple App Store and for Android devices from Google Play.

Dr Paul Crosthwaite
@p_crosthwaite and @imageoffinance 

My favourite Edinburgh street name – and a salute to my PhD research into British Sign Language storytelling traditions – is Dumbiedykes Road, site of the first Academy for the Deaf and Dumb and named for the ‘dummies’ that frequented the area. Established in 1760, the school relocated to London 23 years later; that brief period 231 years ago is fossilised in today’s Edinburgh.

This is a rare example of Scotland’s deaf heritage appearing on the map. The deaf community’s histories go unnoticed, and British Sign Language (BSL) is often overlooked on lists of the country’s indigenous minority languages. People may mistakenly believe that BSL is not a ‘real’ language at all, that it was ‘invented’ by hearing people; in fact, it developed naturally – as languages do – through communities. There is regional variation in BSL and many sign dialects in Scotland, even some debate about whether these are distinctive enough to constitute “Scottish Sign Language”. One thing is certain: BSL has never been a manual ‘version’ of spoken English. It has a completely different grammar and an equal capacity for complexity; I’ve heard it described as a ‘visual-spatial sketchpad’.

There have been deaf signing communities in Scotland since at least the Industrial Revolution, and even some evidence from the 15th century. Yet there is no written form of any sign language, therefore no historical records of signed literature and lore. Deaf culture was – perhaps ironically – passed on through the ‘oral’ tradition: ‘by sign of hand’ not ‘word of mouth’. Equally ironically given its visual nature, BSL culture remains essentially invisible to most hearing people – simply not on their radar.

Place-names are one example of this. Missing from maps and road-signs are their unwritten sign-names. Granted, many of these are borrowed from the hearing world, which reflects the influence of majority culture on BSL. To illustrate: BSL’s fingerspelling alphabet can transliterate written names, as in FK for Falkirk, GW for Glasgow. Other sign-names are based on homonyms: a sign for live is employed for Livingston, and a sign for bath combines with gate to form Bathgate. Yet some sign-names have no apparent connection to the ‘hearing’ name for the place, having developed from a different set of references. Some are obscure (I know no explanation for the sign-name Perth), while others play on visual associations (Shetland’s sign-name alludes to the patterned sweaters traditionally worn there) or historical ones (Stirling may be a cognate of victory, referring to the Battle of Bannockburn; Portobello may allude to its links with the beer industry). There are, predictably, many potential interpretations and folk etymologies for sign-names, and there has not yet been a comprehensive place-name survey undertaken in BSL.

For me, one particularly inspiring thing about learning BSL is that another dimension of nomenclature is emerging on my map of Scotland, and with it a sensation of strangerhood in places I felt I knew intimately. My general understanding of the Celtic, Anglic, Scandinavian and Pictish roots of Scottish place-names is enriched by a set of toponyms in a different modality, developed in a signed tradition. If Scotland of the past and present is a palimpsest of overlaid and interlocking communities, then there is another heritage written in invisible ink: the handprint of the deaf community, another lens through which to explore our surroundings.

Ella Leith is a third year PhD student in Scottish Ethnology, a BSL learner and an amateur place-names enthusiast.
Twitter: @leithyface
Many thanks to Bryan Marshall for the conversations that inspired this blog. Any errors in the sign-name clips are my own.

Coins, shells, strips of cloth, family photos, notes, memorial cards and a host of other items are found around Irish holy wells. These collections are part devotion, commemoration and prayer. The leaving of votive offerings, as an intention or request, is an ongoing tradition at these sites. It is a practice that mixes Celtic customs, folk traditions and Catholic theology. Each of these items has a story; each of these items is a story. Part of my research is to attempt to tell the story of this practice and these objects.     

Holy wells are spread across Ireland and Britain, especially in formerly Celtic lands. Some of these springs have been the site of religious-spiritual activities since the pagan era, but were adapted to Christian worship. As a result, in Ireland, these sites are currently mostly associated with the miraculous deeds of Celtic saints. Prayer rituals and religious services are held at the wells in honour of the spiritual patron linked to the site. People take away the well water for blessings, protection and supplementary medicine.

I am researching holy wells as sites of contemporary pilgrimage, where people travel to seek reflection or for a particular intention. As a geographer, I look at the importance of these places that give solace, comfort, hope and space for contemplation. The leaving of votive offerings is one of the clearest examples of how holy wells have strong meanings and powerful attachments for people. Each token represents a visit, the actions of someone whose belief brought this person here for a reason that is personally significant.

Initial fascination with these objects is replaced by speculation on their purpose. While some of the intentions appear obvious, the meanings behind other items are shrouded from everyone except the believer, and the saint or spirit of the place. This is a rich cultural practice, but it is also people’s lives. Contained in these objects are dreams, despairs, anxieties, losses and a host of deeply intimate motives.

Each item is emotionally charged telling a story in its own way. Memorial cards of departed loved ones display long lives of parents and grandparents, while those showing young people hint at tragedy. Short notes contain messages for the saints or spirits: giving thanks, calling for intercessions or just expressing feelings, which may otherwise go unarticulated. The reasons behind certain tokens are clouded, their story obscure.

Stories are embedded in objects. Monuments tell national histories, souvenirs evoke hidden memories and childhood items are kept for prosperity. My research is concerned with the stories of the offerings left at holy wells. In my writing, I tell the stories of these objects in a general sense, but I am also deeply aware that each of these objects is a story, a story I do not know and cannot tell.     

                                                                                                                                                     
Richard Scriven (@CorkGeog)

Photo Caption: A collection of votive offerings at St Gobnait’s Well, Cork, Ireland.