Voices through time

Voices Through Time

Voices Through Time: the Story of Care, funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, is an ambitious four year programme to transcribe and digitise the most fragile parts of the Coram archive dating back to 1739. As well allowing public online access to this valuable resource, the programme and informs and inspires the public to understand the past, present and future of care through creative programmes with care-experienced young people telling the #realstoriesofcare.

This year, 3,000 volunteers transcribed 15,911 pages of records and our young Story of Interest volunteers delved into our archive to research the lives of individual ‘foundling’ children in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Inspired by our archive careexperienced young people worked with the artist Nicole Harris to create a narrative blanket inspired by the mothers’ petition letters of the 18th century and their own experiences of home. Find out more at coramstory.org.uk.

In the coming year – as government advances its implementation plan of the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care today – young people will co-create the first documentary on the lives of children in The Foundling Hospital and what it means to secure for them a loving home.

3,000 15,911

Coram Society

Volunteer Transcribers

Pages Of Records

Coram Society highlights in our public programme of discussion events this year which included a Tea and Talk with Dame Gillian Pugh, author of London’s Forgotten Children: Thomas Coram and The Foundling Hospital, to mark its new edition and exploration of the role of Nurses to the children in the 18th and 19th century featuring new research by Dr Kate Gibson published in History Today.

Tiny Traces

The Foundling Museum displays on loan Coram’s historic art collection. This year research in the Coram archive records of Asian and African children in our care in the 18th and 19th centuries was displayed in the Tiny Traces exhibition and the Museum interpreted items from the Coram art collection in Finding Family, its first exhibition co-created with care-experienced young people.

This Coram Century

In 1922, the first women became governors of The Foundling Hospital, which also held the premiere of the first film version of Oliver Twist. In his novel of 1837, Charles Dickens – who lived close by and wrote petition letters for mothers seeking admission for their child - had named Mr Brownlow, after the then Secretary of The Foundling Hospital. Child star Jackie Coogan (below right) who had previously played The Kid in Charlie Chaplin’s first full length movie inspired by his own experiences in a Lambeth workhouse as a child, made a donation to the charity. Our foyer display marks the key developments of the century for children and the Coram story, including the formation of Coram Voice as the first advocacy organisation for children and the creation of Coram Children’s Legal Centre as the UK’s response to the UNESCO International Year of the Child.

Feedback from the spoken word event What is in a Name

Old Coram Association

In June, Coram held its annual Coram Day, marking the final event of the Old Coram Association after 75 years of support to former pupils. These records will become part of the living archive at the heart of the Coram story, digitised and available for decades to come.