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Project Outcomes 2006–2022

In 2005 a group of researchers at La Trobe University in Melbourne, namely Christine Bigby, Richard Broome, Katie Holmes, Lee-Ann Monk, Corinne Manning, John Tebbutt and Christine Dew, began an Australian Research Council Linkage grant with Kew Residential Services to write a multi-outcome history of Kew Cottages. This institution was about to shut down, and Kew Residential Services, a part of the Department of Human Services in Victoria, wanted a history written to mark the closure of the cottages after 121 years. 

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The project’s title was ‘A Great and Crying Need: A History of Kew Residential Services, 1887–2007, through innovative textual, oral, aural and experiential media’. It aimed to do the following:

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This original history of Kew Residential Services (KRS), formerly known as Kew Cottages, will trace the lives of its residents from 1887, analysing the changing discourses, policies and practices for people with intellectual disability. It will analyse the history of Kew Residential Services in terms of a modern society’s shifting response to difference. The Project is internationally innovative researching with and for people with intellectual disability and giving voice to their experiences. 

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The project promised to produce two books—a history and an oral history—as well as an exhibition, a radio program, photographic research, non-verbal research with residents, a website and other academic articles. 

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During the project Cameron Rose replaced Christine Dew on the aural/experiential part of the project, and he produced further digital stories with non-verbal residents of Kew Cottages and an exhibition. Also, David Henderson came on board (supported by funding from the director of the Living with Disability Research Centre at La Trobe University, Christine Bigby) to become co-author with Lee-Ann Monk of the history of Kew Cottages. Over a period of fifteen years, this project’s outputs were mentored and steered by Chief Investigators Christine Bigby, Richard Broome and Katie Holmes.

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Below are listed the nineteen publications and thirteen conference presentations created by this project.  

 

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Book Publications 

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  • Corinne Manning, Bye-Bye Charlie: Stories from the Vanishing World of Kew Cottages  University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2008.
     

  • Lee-Ann Monk & David Henderson with Christine Bigby, Richard Broome and Katie Holmes, Failed Ambitions. Kew Cottages and Changing Ideas of Intellectual Disabilities, Monash University Press, Clayton, 2023.

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Chapters/Articles

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  • Lee-Ann Monk, ‘“Made enquires, can elicit no history of injury”: Researching the History of Institutional Abuse in the Archives’, Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria, no. 6 (September 2007), https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/provenance-journal/provenance-2007/made-enquiries-can-elicit-no-history-injury.
     

  • Corinne Manning, ‘Imprisoned in State Care: Life Inside Kew Cottages, 1925–2008’, Health and History, 11, no. 1 (May 2009): 149-171.
     

  • Lee-Ann Monk, ‘Exploiting Patient Labour at Kew Cottages, Australia, 1887–1950’, British Journal of Learning Disabilities Special Issue: Histories of Institutional Change, Choice and Money, 38, no. 2 (June 2010): 86–94.
     

  • Corinne Manning, ‘“My memory’s back!” Inclusive Learning Disability Research Using Ethics, Oral History and Digital Storytelling’, British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 38, no. 3 (September 2010): 160–67.
     

  • Christine Bigby and Dorothy Atkinson, ‘Written out of History: Invisible Women in Intellectual Disability Social Work’, Australian Social Work, 63, no. 1 (2010): 4–17.
     

  • Corinne Manning, ‘From Surrender to Activism: The Transformation of Disability and Mothering at Kew Cottages, Australia’, in Disability and Mothering: Liminal Spaces of Embodied Knowledge, eds Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Jen Cellio, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, 2021, 183–202. 
     

  • Lee-Ann Monk and Corinne Manning, ‘Exploring Patient Experience in an Australian Institution for Children with Learning Disabilities, 1870–1933’, in Disabled Children: Contested Caring 1850–1979, eds Anne Borsay and Pamela Dale, (London and Brookfield, Vermont: Pickering & Chatto, London and Brookfield,  2012), 73–86.
     

  • Lee-Ann Monk, ‘Intimacy and Oppression: A Historical Perspective’, in Sexuality and Relationships in the Lives of People with Intellectual Disabilities: Standing in My Shoes, eds Rohhss Chapman, Sue Ledger, and Louise Townson, with Daniel Docherty (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2015), 46–64.
     

  • Lee-Ann Monk, ‘Paradoxical Lives: Intellectual Disability Policy and Practice in Twentieth-Century Australia’, in Intellectual Disability in the Twentieth Century: Transnational Perspectives on People, Policy and Practice, eds Jan Walmsley and Simon Jarrett (Bristol: Policy Press, 2019), 21–33.
     

  • Richard Broome, ‘They Had Little Chance’. The Kew Cottages Fire of 1996’, Victorian Historical Journal, 91, no. 2 (December 2020): 245–66.

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Exhibitions

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  • Cameron Rose (designed and developed from an original concept by Chris Dew), Kew Cottages Exhibition, State Library Victoria, June 2008; Hawthorn Town Hall Gallery, November 2008.
     

  • Corinne Manning, ‘Kew Cottages Digital Histories’, Exhibitor Kew Festival, 2008.

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Multimedia

 

  • Chris Dew, A Great Big Bag, short film, 2005. 
     

  • Cameron Rose, Three Short Films about Kew Cottages Residents, DVD, La Trobe University, 2008.
     

  • John Tebbutt and Michelle Rayner, A Great and Crying Need: A History of Kew Cottages,
    ABC RN Hindsight, 24 August 2008, www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight/stories/2008/2334093.htm
     


Website 

 

  • Corinne Manning and Lee-Ann Monk (content development) 2008, Cameron Rose and Amber Benjafield (website development and design), Kew Cottages: A History https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/tep/125756, launched 2010 but now archived.
     

  • Corinne Manning and Lee-Ann Monk (content development) 2008 (website development and design), Kew Cottages: A History, second rebuilt edition, www.kewcottageshistory.com.au, launched 2022.

 


Conferences and Symposiums

 

  • Corinne Manning, ‘Violent Imaginings: Oral History and Abuse at Kew Cottages’, Australian Historical Association Conference, Australian National University, Canberra, 2006.
     

  • Lee-Ann Monk, ‘Researching and Writing the History of Institutional Abuse from Archival Sources, Kew Cottages, 1887–1908’, Australian Historical Association Conference, Australian National University, Canberra, 2006.
     

  • Corinne Manning, ‘Working with the “Children of the Darkness”: Conducting Oral History with Intellectually Disabled Residents of Kew Cottages’, Revising the Past and the Future: Current Research on Intellectual and Physical Disability, Faculty of Health Sciences, La Trobe University, Annual Conference, 2006.
     

  • Corinne Manning, ‘“We just wore ordinary clothes, like prison clothes”: The Importance of Oral History in Understanding the World of Kew Cottages’, An Interdisciplinary Symposium, La Trobe University, 2007.
     

  • Corinne Manning, ‘Imprisoned in State Care: Life Inside Kew Cottages 1925–2008’, A Public Seminar on the History of Mental Illness and Mental Hospitals in Australia, Museum of Brisbane and the Centre for Public Culture and Ideas, 2007.
     

  • Corinne Manning, ‘Working with the “Children of the Darkness”, ‘Researching Institutional Histories’, Social History of Learning Disability Research Group, International Seminar, The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, 2007.
     

  • Corinne Manning and Lee-Ann Monk, ‘“Sexual vices are kept within a very limited compass”: Sexual Understandings and Expression in Australia’s Largest Institution for People with learning Disabilities, 1887–2006’, ‘Learning Disability, Relationships and Sexuality: Past and Present’, Social History of Learning Disability Research Group Conference, The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, 2007.
     

  • Lee-Ann Monk, ‘“On the same lines as those in England”: British Influences on an Australian Institution for People with Learning Disabilities’, ‘Researching Institutional Histories’, International Seminar, The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, 2007.
     

  • Dorothy Atkinson & Alistair Thompson, Keynote Address, ‘Life Stories, History and Intellectual Disability’, Kew Project Conference, La Trobe University, 2007.
     

  • Corinne Manning, ‘When State Care Turns Lethal: The 1996 Fire at Kew Cottages’, Australian Historical Association Conference, University of Melbourne, 2008.
     

  • Lee-Ann Monk, ‘“Little better than chattel slaves”: Inmate Labour in an Australian Institution for Learning Disability’, ‘Spending Time in Institutions’, International Research Seminar, The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom, 2008.
     

  • Lee-Ann Monk, ‘Changing Definitions of Difference: The Establishment of Kew Cottages’, Constructing Intellectual Disability: A Symposium on the History of a Concept, sponsored by the Centre for Disability Studies, University of Sydney, 2009.
     

  • Lee-Ann Monk, ‘Changing Definitions of Difference: The Establishment of Kew Cottages’, Constructing Intellectual Disability: A Symposium on the History of a Concept, sponsored by Griffith Abilities Research Program in partnership with The Disability Studies Research Construction, School of Human Services and Social Work, Griffith University, Brisbane, 2009.
     

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