Enable Heritage Project

Enable Heritage Project

'Our Past, My Future'

In 1954, five families met to talk about forming an organisation in Scotland to support parents like themselves who were raising children with learning disabilities. Several meetings later, they published a notice in the local paper inviting anyone to attend a public meeting in the Glasgow Corporation Education Offices on the 9th of April 1954. Over 300 people turned up and an organisation was born. 70 years later, Enable is celebrating its platinum anniversary with a wide network of members, staff, and support services throughout Scotland.  

We are delighted to say that we have been funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund for a project entitled ‘Our Past, My Future’. Through this project, we would like to celebrate and promote the heritage of the social changes for people with learning disabilities over the last 70 years, and the role that Enable, the nation’s largest disability charity, along with its members, have played in making that change.  

A generation of people with learning disabilities have lives that have changed dramatically with the positive changes to rights over the last 70 years. As these people grow older, we believe it is important to make an effort to document and archive their voices and experiences so that we can learn from and remember them. As well as people with learning disabilities who are growing older, we want to capture the voices and memories of staff who supported disabled people locally during these social changes as well as parents, whose experiences are totally different from a parent of a disabled child today. We believe that by capturing these voices, we will ensure disabled people, their families, and supporters, can engage in and be inspired by the heritage of those who have paved the way for the rights they now benefit from. 

We also have an extensive archive located at our main office in Inspire House, where we hold documents, photographs, newspaper articles, and other historical materials which help to paint a picture of our charity’s history and heritage over the last 70 years. We even have the handwritten minutes from our first official meeting on the 9th of April 1954! As we trace our past, we can appreciate how far we have come. We have included a selection of our digitised archival material below for you to look at.