The Cultural History of the NHS. (360G-Wellcome-104835_Z_14_Z)

This project will define and interrogate the cultural history of the British National Health Service. Far more than just the principal provider of clinical, hospital and public health services, the NHS has become a national symbol, a cultural icon and a focus of popular and political belief, enthusiasm, criticism and even anger. Yet while the NHS has been the subject of frequent political and policy histories, its place at the heart of British culture and identity remains unexamined. Weaving tog ether four major investigative strands, we will explore the NHS across its 70 year lifecycle from 1948 to 2018. Our research will reconstruct popular attitudes towards and understandings of the NHS from its early years to the present day; examine cultural representations of the NHS in all their forms; scrutinise the self-representation strategies of the NHS itself; and finally, identify the roles played by the NHS as a vehicle to implement social policies and convey cultural norms of behaviour a nd belief. A wide-ranging programme of public history and community engagement, nucleated around the 2018 seventieth anniversary of the NHS, will serve both as a principal research tool and a significant outcome of this project. This study will not only break new ground in the history of medicine, but will develop innovative strategies of community engagement, embodied in a highly interactive 'People's History of the NHS' and a methodological 'toolkit' empowering communities to explore local an d regional histories and meanings of the NHS (and its key precursor medical institutions).