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Back to the Future: Archiving Residential Children’s Homes (ARCH) in Scotland and Germany

Subject Area Modern and Contemporary History
Term from 2020 to 2024
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 448421360
 
Final Report Year 2025

Final Report Abstract

Many people who have spent a period of their lives in residential care have the problem that they have only inadequate biographical memory aids of their own upbringing. Against this background, the transnational study investigated the possibilities and limits of an identity-forming memory of childhood, youth and shared everyday life by means of (community) archival records of residential care in Scotland and Germany. As part of a three phased approach, historical, current and future archival materials were analysed as possible memorabilia. The historically oriented analysis of the archival materials of two institutional archives made it clear that for decades little relevance was given to archiving shared everyday life – this also applies in particular to the transmission of young people's perspectives. As many historical archival records were also not accessible to care experienced people, only a very limited potential for identity forming memory could be determined for both institutional archives. With regard to the present and future, the investigation of the participatory development of 'living' digital community archives with current members of two residential care homes, respectively one in each country, showed that community archiving based on the relevancies and perspectives of young people had a high potential to support identity forming memories. In the Scottish residential group, working with specially developed archiving software was seen as an enriching addition to the collection of individual memory aids for young people, which is now required by law. In the German residential group, the associated creation of community archival records served to deal with the recording and accessibility of memory aids for young people for the first time, away from organisation centred case files. In addition, during the collaborative archiving with children and young people, numerous practices of shared biographical memory of everyday experiences and developments could be reconstructed, which already proved to be identity forming for the participants in the present. On the one hand, the study illustrated the unique potential of digital community archives, which can significantly enrich a culture of archiving and remembrance in the context of residential care that is now established in Scotland and needs to be expanded in Germany. On the other hand, a professional assumption of responsibility for the memory needs of future care leavers, up-to-date digital infrastructures and an adequate amount of staff and time are important conditions for success in order to exploit the potential of digital community archives in the future.

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