As someone who works in a public engagement role I am regularly introducing people into the archives, and devising projects working with archival records. Arriving at The National Archives in 2015 in anticipation of the 70th anniversary of the Partition of British India and seeing for the first time records describing the extraordinary violence, I began involuntarily crying. I was taken aback by what I was experiencing, finding myself choking up in front of visitors and unable to speak, or to hold back what felt like an ocean of tears. As I now mature into my role, I am employing the methodologies of a historian, dissecting the records and the projects I lead by asking deeper and richer questions and admitting more complexity into my analysis. On the back of my own journey in to the archives, my contribution will discuss the setting up of collaborations between The National Archives and psychotherapists at Stillpoint Spaces London and the Black, African and Asian Therapy Network (BAATN), aimed at kick-starting important conversations as well as psychological processing of challenging material relating both to 20th century Black British history and Indian indentured history. The presentation will explore, through examples, how we have begun to address these emotive and complex histories, reflecting on how through designing content and spaces that allow the processing of emotions new methodologies, including art and practice based, emerged to engage audiences. The sources for my presentation stem from the collaborations I have led. They are inter-disciplinary, grounded in my experience of making projects happen, and located at the heart of our role as a public facing archive.

Iqbal Singh is part of the Outreach team at The National Archives, which he joined in 2015. He has led on a number of projects including on the 1919 Riots, South Asia and the First World War, colonial seafarers in the 1920s, and The Partition of British India. He is currently leading two pioneering programmes addressing histories of racism, colonialism and empire. The first does this by looking at mixing archival research with therapeutic practice and the second explores these topics through the use of audio drama.