About this project

Life-stories are people’s reminiscences about past experiences, told to another person or persons at various points in time. Lifestories enhance identity as they express who we are and how we got that way. They allow people to connect with others and to bear witness to the social conditions through which our identities, as members of specific social groups, have been shaped and regulated. The aim of this project is to support older people with intellectual disabilities to tell their life-stories and to develop a website to house these stories so they become a valuable social record of Irish history that is accessible to other people with intellectual disabilities, family members and supporters, and members of the wider community.

Sharing life-stories is important. The Irish tradition of the storyteller has been a key valued role in our society for many hundreds of years. All the stories that have been passed down from generation to generation have been integral to the formulation of our culture.

However, opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities in Ireland to‘tell ones story’ have been limited. Often it assumed that they have little or nothing of interest to say. Other people – families, practitioners, historians – have spoken on their behalf. Key aspects of their lives have been repressed and silenced. All factors have made it difficult for older people with disabilities in particular to ‘tell their story’, thus to receive the necessary social validation and honouring of their lives as lived to the fullest extent as has been possible.

Gathering these stories has enabled older people with intellectual disabilities in Ireland to claim their unique personal and social place in this country. In addition, developing an accessible archive of them endorses the idea that by reviewing the experiences of members of this group, we gain a greater in-depth appreciation of their past lives and thus a greater understanding of how we might step towards full social integration in the future.

The material on this website has been gathered by the researchers involved in the project. All names of places, people and services have been changed in the stories.

You can read the report of the findings of the project by clicking on the picture of the report below.

This project is funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and by Marie Curie Actions as part of a large scale Transfer of Knowledge trio of projects running in the NIID. (For more information on these projects please click here