Finding Foundlings: Searching for the Voice of the Historical Child in the Foundling Museum

This paper presents art practice and research from a residency at the Foundling Museum in London, which was undertaken as part of an AHRC Ph.D. entitled Heritage As Process: Constructing the Historical Child’s Voice through Art Practice.

The history of the Foundling Museum revolves around children; abandoned foundlings left within the Hospital. Children are rarely vocal in the preservation of their heritage, rather this process is generally undertaken by adults, on behalf of the children, “but perhaps for their childhood selves”.1

As part of an artist residency at the museum, workshops with children were facilitated that integrated art practice and performance methods. The aim behind the research was to explore how contemporary children engaged with the narratives of the foundling children; responding with greater or lesser empathy. Performance methods were used to enable the children to ‘construct’ a foundling from their imagination. The outcome from these workshops allowed exploration into the under-representation of the historical child and how art practice – fuelled by the workshops – might capture the voice of children in museums and archives. Due to the ethical requirements surrounding child protection, field notes were used as a method to document the process; therefore both the historical and contemporary child have disappeared in the process.

The paper will conclude with a discussion of the artworks exhibited in the Foundling Museum at the residency closing event.

1 K. Darian Smith and C. Pascoe, ‘Mapping the Field’ in Children, Childhood and Cultural Heritage (Routledge, 2013) p. 3.

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