Willow Court Heritage Site Inc (WCHSI) has recently been accepted as a member organisation of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience.

The International Coalition of Sites of Conscience acceptance of WCHSI as a member ensures the former asylum’s role in the history of convict transportation and disability institutionalisation in Australia will now be recognised globally alongside other locations including a concentration camp in Europe, a Gulag Museum in Russia and a 200-year-old slave house in Africa.

This is a profoundly timely and pivotal moment in the chequered history of this historically important site that has often been neglected, vandalised and exploited for commercial gain. It restores its dignity and rightful place in Tasmania’s narrative.

Originating in the United States, the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (ICSC or the Coalition) is a global network of museums, historic sites and grassroots initiatives dedicated to building a more just and peaceful future through engaging communities in remembering struggles for human rights and addressing their modern repercussions.

Founded in 1999, the Coalition now includes more than 365 Sites of Conscience members in 70 countries. The Coalition supports these members through seven regional networks that encourage collaboration and international exchange of knowledge and best practices.

Advocacy for Willow Court to become a Site of Conscience has played out over fourteen years. Starting in 2011 when TAFE teachers training students to become disability support workers, Mark Krause and Janet Presser felt it was crucial that students understand the past to be able to understand the present and have background knowledge of the experiences some of the people they would support have experienced. In their search to tie past to present they came across Sites of Conscience, became members and utilised their resources. These were their guide so to speak.

Krause and Presser launched the advocacy group, Willow Court Tasmania History Group, on social media in 2012 to introduce people to the ideals of Sites of Conscience; that site still exists and contains a wealth of information 13 years on.

They then launched the Willow Court Advocacy Groups website, WillowCourtTasmania.org. The purpose was to complement their internet presence with Facebook and allow people to understand why they would like Willow Court Tasmania to become a Site of Conscience.

As members of the then Derwent Valley Council Willow Court Working Group, Presser and Krause introduced the concept of a Site of Conscience for Willow Court and the benefits this would provide in interpreting the site’s difficult history.

Ladies Cottage Mental Health Week Carleen Paul talking of her experience. Image courtesy Annie Trumble Photography.

The Willow Court Working Group became Friends of Willow Court, a special committee of the Derwent Valley Council in 2012, and through the ongoing input from Presser and Krause, Anne Salt – a former Royal Derwent Hospital employee, who discovered a young family member on the children’s ward when working there in the mid-1970s – continued to implement sites of conscience principles into the development of the content of Willow Court history tours, events and talks on Willow Court.

Willow Court Heritage Site Inc has evolved as an offshoot of the former Friends of Willow Court and will build on the advocacy of that committee, to raise awareness of the national significance of the Willow Court precinct.

The WCHSI board of management is comprised of members with a wide range of skills and connections to Willow Court/the former Royal Derwent Hospital, including people who lived at the former hospital, relatives and advocates of people who lived there and people who worked at the site. Members are leaders across education, disability and human rights sectors and the arts.

With a mission to preserve, protect, promote and provide education about Willow Court’s/Royal Derwent Hospital’s challenging one-hundred-and-seventy-four-year history, the organisation’s constitution and practices are aligned to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the principles of co-design with people with lived experience of Willow Court and the broader Tasmanian community whose cultural heritage is intrinsically linked to the evolution of Willow Court’s history.

Interpretation of disability institutions, such as Willow Court, is often focused on historical content and built heritage such as architectural features and periods of construction and a broad overview of the changes in treatment of mental illness, often neglecting to mention the significance in changes in attitudes and treatment of people with intellectual disability.

This broad view provides little insight or understanding of the social and political processes that led to legal human rights violations, or the trauma inflicted on those incarcerated, and dispossessed and their families, or the resilience and strength of victims/survivors.

Examples of these social and political processes that impacted Tasmanians include the virtually forgotten treatment of convict invalids and insane convicts, some of whom spent many decades of their life in the New Norfolk asylum.

Others examples include the 1920 Mental Deficiency Act that categorised promiscuity as a mental illness, resulting in young women being incarcerated in the New Norfolk institution; the use of aversion therapy to treat gay men confined to the institution; and the medical practice of advising parents to place their disabled child in the institution and forgetting them, thereby separating their child for life from family and community.

The organisation’s Mission is aimed at preventing this erasure from happening, by giving voice to Willow Court victims/survivors and families, advocates, employees and others closely associated with Willow Court.

The organisation’s practices will provide an opportunity for the wider community to engage in this understanding and activities to ‘remember the past to build a better present and future’ for Tasmanians with disability.

Ongoing advocacy for recognition of Willow Court’s significant social history has extended beyond Tasmania. WCHSI was very pleased to have made contact in 2023 with Linda Steele, a researcher into disability institution sites of conscience at the University of Technology, Sydney. Steele and her research colleague, Phillippa Carnemolla, continue to engage with and provide support to WCHSI.

Further advocacy extended beyond Australia when in September 2024 WCHSI reached out to the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience in the US, who soon after arranged a meeting with the Global Networks Program Director based in Barcelona, Spain. The Program Director and colleagues in the United States met with WCHSI board members online and soon after WCHSI applied for and was accepted as a member organisation of the International Sites of Conscience.

TAFE Learning Pathways student’s visit to Willow Court hosted by Carleen Paul and Anne Salt. Image courtesy Anne Salt.

The ICSC are also able to offer WCHSI expert advice and technical support gained through their experiences supporting their global network of sites of conscience and a wealth of resources that will enable WCHSI to develop projects on Willow Court. The first of these is already in progress through an oral history project designed to capture the personal stories of former patients, family members, advocates, employees and anyone with a close connection to Willow Court.

The expert advice offered by ICSC is a unique opportunity to memorialise injustices, including the stories of all those affected by Willow Court, historical government policies, medical practices, and societal attitudes during the site’s history that segregated and stigmatised individuals based on their mental health, disability or difference, and connect it to today’s claims for a more inclusive society.

The International Coalition of Sites of Conscience has provided a letter of support for WCHSI, addressed to the State Government, acknowledging the organisations efforts to preserve the Willow Court historic site and highlighting the benefits of transforming it into a Site of Conscience.

This initiative will provide a vital space to interpret the site’s significant social history, and as the only disability Site of Conscience in Australia, possibly globally, it has the potential to bring significant economic benefits to the Derwent Valley.

Currently, there is no publicly available space within the Willow Court barracks precinct for interpretation, education, dialogue and family research.

In the absence of a space for interpretation within the Willow Court barracks precinct, WCHSI continues to undertake a range of projects and activities. These include development of a Statement of Remembrance, the laying of wreaths at the New Norfolk cenotaph on ANZAC Day last year to remember the war Veterans who lived out their days at Willow Court/Royal Derwent Hospital, unable to return to civilian life after injuries suffered on active service; hosting an event for Mental Health Week during which board member, Carleen Paul, a former patient spoke of her experience; and hosting of a group of TAFE Learning Pathways students on a visit to Willow Court.

WCHSI has also been in collaboration over the past eighteen months with Speakout Advocacy and Linda Steele and Phillippa Carnemolla, researchers from the University of Technology Sydney who specialise in disability inclusion and disability human rights to develop a small pilot project with local people with disability as a first step in developing a Disability Inclusive Framework for Willow Court, the first of its kind for a former disability institution in Australia.

The Tasmanian Government has been approached to consider funding of the Disability Inclusive Framework project that would provide opportunities for people with disability across Tasmania to have input into planning for and interpretation of Willow Court.

Sites of Conscience: https://www.sitesofconscience.org/membership/willow-court-heritage-site-australia/

Website: https://willowcourttasmania.org/