A new take on family history?

How do you define your family? How do you tell the story of your family history? And who do you include? Laura King, Professor of Collaborative History in the School of History, explores these questions and more in her Loose Ends project, which is funded by the AHC Impact Acceleration Account scheme. 

Our understanding of ourselves can be tightly bound up with our family and family heritage. When we think about family history, we mostly visualise a traditional, genealogical family tree but sometimes that alone is not enough. Families can be more diverse and complex, and a family tree cannot always capture what family means to us, or who we include and who we exclude. As part of the project, Laura is working with artist Ellie Harrison (Polite Rebellion). “It’s been fantastic to get the opportunity to scale up a new project with Polite Rebellion and think through the many ways ‘family’ can be defined,” Laura explains. “Loose Ends invites a much more inclusive way of working with family histories in exciting and innovative ways.”  

'Loose Ends, by Ellie Harrison/Polite Rebellion'

​Drawing on Laura’s recent publication Ellie created an installation of embroidered artworks based on her own and participants’ chosen families. The installation, which was displayed at the internationally-renowned Compass Festival in Leeds, attracted more than 600 visitors over the course of a week, who gave their feedback on the impact of the installation on them. Visitors also had the opportunity to create their own family tree. There is also an online version of the installation, allowing users to leaf through Ellie’s journal, listen to her talking about the project, explore the artwork in detail, and find out more about the research that influenced it.   

If this has made you think about your own family history, why not take a look at the installation? It might just inspire you to start a family history project of your own.