In this webinar Professor Mark Doel shares a web-based experimental project, which he created, called socialworkin40objects.com to see if it was possible to tell the story of social work through objects. To date, over 150 people from 25 countries around the globe have ‘donated’ to this Virtual Exhibition of Social Work. The story of how the donated Object connects the person to social work is important and, taken as a collective narrative, can help social work to speak to the wider world. In this presentation Mark suggests that a collection of objects and their stories creates a deeper impression of social work than traditional texts and definitions.
Mark introduces examples from the Collection and links his presentation to material culture theory to explore the idea of ‘charged objects’ - ones that powerfully illustrate the attachment between artefact, individual and profession.