Bell for carers

Church bell for carers. Last in series. 8pm, 25/02/2021. Recorded on the village green. Still night. Almost full moon. Clear sky. Opening silence is the silence of the village.

Goodbye to all that...

Goodbye to a national asset, the end of a national treasure

What it was

What is possible and What isn't

Why

INTRODUCTION and CONTENTS

Welcome!

At the end of 1988 I was employed by the Planned Environment Therapy Trust, a small charity founded in 1966, to explore various options for looking after the records and other materials of a way of living and working with people who presented problems to themselves and/or to others.

That way of 'living and working', which is an important conjunction, sometimes has names, but often hasn't, except locally, as it arises from human relations and the realities of being being human, and being human together. This presents an interesting problem for an archivist building up records and memories of the field; but of the gifted terms I was asked to address, 'Planned Environment Therapy' is, for me, a kind, descriptive term which came from people who invested themselves in others, and made major sacrifices to do so. The term which blossomed out of the Second World War and which largely filled the space which the way of living and working refers to was "therapeutic community", which in its two terms, interacting and brought together, captures an essence which is lost in its common abbreviation TC.

Anyway, in 1989 I was asked by the Planned Environment Therapy Trust to establish a comprehensive, activist Archive and Study Centre devoted broadly to Planned Environment Therapy/ Therapeutic Community, and continued to do that for almost 30 years, until the week before Christmas 2018, when I handed in my keys, and possession and responsibility passed to the Mulberry Bush Organisation. The Mulberry Bush renamed the 'Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive and Study Centre' the 'Planned Environment Therapy Archive and Special Collections', and renamed the site, formerly the 'Barns Conference Centre', the 'Mulberry Bush Third Space", or MB3.

A little under seven years later, in October 2025, without warning and without consultation - apparently even without consulting the archivists - the Mulberry Bush announced that they would be closing the site and disposing of the extensive and unique archive, library, oral history and museum collections by May 31st, 2026, seven months later. Although appeals went to the Mulberry Bush Organisation's Chair of Trustees to reconsider, which were bucked to the CEO and Deputy CEO, it became clear that the decision was final, irreversible. A fait accompli.

This is an evolving website in which I try to come to terms with all this - initially with what was in danger of being lost, then with what is being lost, and now with what has been lost, and why. And, importantly, how it has come about that an award-winning national asset, what Jonathan Stanley of NCERCC has called a national treasure, built up over almost 40 years, has been summarily destroyed. What does this tell us about the past and future of therapeutic community work with children, adolescents, and adults, nationally and internationally. What does it tell us anout one of the premier British organisations devoted to therapeutic work with children and young people? What does it tell us about the institutional ownership of other people's heritage?

This is a rather immense and distressing task, as you can imagine, and I am grateful for your being here, and bearing with the odd way in which different parts are being organised and re-organised, written and re-written, and calling on you to effectively discover the story for yourself through the raw materials of past writings and new syntheses. If you have visited before, you will see that as of April 12th, 2026, as the process at MB3 has developed, and hope for a re-think has disappeared, the site has been re-structured. The previous structure can be found here. Now that the fait accompli is complete, I will have to reconsider the structure again.

In theory, if you would like to, you should be able to begin reading this website as you would a book, beginning with the 'Introduction to a Foreword' (or wherever), and clicking through at the bottom of each page to move to the next chapter.

Despite the context of destruction, I think you will find a lot of joy, creativity and love here. You can not work successfully with archives based in traumatic experience, and with the people and institutions represented in them, without a sense of play, and a continually renewed sense of just how amazing, as well as terrible, we as human beings are. And this, along with records of trauma, is what the old and gone Archive held.

Craig Fees

CONTENTS

The Author

Introduction to a Foreword (2026/03/15)

Foreword, February 27, 2026

PREFACE

Acknowledgements

Some notes and conventions

PART I: WHAT IS BEING LOST

I.1: A BEGINNING: Goodbye to all that

I.2: WHAT IS BEING LOST?

1. AN ECOSYSTEM

2. A SPECIALIST RESEARCH AND REFERENCE LIBRARY

1. Research Library: Acquisitions Policy (1999)
2. Building a Library: Every book that comes into the Library....comes with a story (2004)
3. Cascade of People: "In a Healthy Ecosystem, the Library Builds Itself"
4. Through the core sample, down the rabbit hole: two techniques for discovering the magic of an internationally used, unique research library
5. Short notes:
- People: Who is Bill Garner?
- People: Roland Meighan
- Seeking the Source (Personal Blog from 2011)
- "When I come in to work that night, I am stunned..."

3. MATHOM HOUSE: A STOREHOUSE OF PHYSICAL CULTURE, STORY AND MEMORY

1. A listing of objects, largely from memory (in progress)

2. A Brief Guide to the User's Room (c. 2004)

3. Case Study: "Course members were clear that they would like these symbolic reminders of their Therapeutic Child Care course to go to The Planned Environment Therapy Trust": The University of Reading Therapeutic Childcare Tea Chest

4. A TRADITION OF RESEARCHERS AND RESEARCH, WITH SPECIALIST ARCHIVAL KNOWLEDGE AND SUPPORT

5. A TOOL TO DEFEND, GROUND, EVIDENCE, SUPPORT, AND PROMOTE THE WORK, THE WORKERS, AND THOSE THEY WORK WITH AND FOR (One of those essential things which is not needed until the wind changes, which it will)

6. BELONGING

7. BELIEF (Trust, Belief, Hope)

8. POSSIBILTY

9. PROMISE (to the future)

10. "We"

PART II:
THE PREDECESSOR, THE ARCHIVE AND STUDY CENTRE

In its public statements and public-facing documents, why does the Mulberry Bush not only obscure, but negate its predecessor?

II.1: Context - background, history, and surrounding environment

II.2: The basic work of the Archive and Study Centre

1. Archives

2. Oral History/Oral Archiving

3. Library

4. Museum

5. Outreach: Putting the Archive to work in and for the community

6. Welcoming, developing and supporting researchers and research

7. Active participation in the fields the Archive intersects with

8. Community-building/ building Communication

II.3: Discovering and Demonstrating the Possible: Selections from an active Archive

1. The Joint Newsletter (2001-2004) or, to give it its full, unrestrained title: The Joint Newsletter of the Planned Environment Therapy Trust, the Charterhouse Group of Therapeutic Communities, and the Association of Therapeutic Communities, with the Community of Communities

1. A complete list of issues, with links to download (read, explore, enjoy)

2. Archive Weekends (2004-2018)

1. "everybody was part of the experience" : The Performance Weekend 5th/6th March 2011 (Peter Still, Red Hill School)

3. Association of Therapeutic Communities Administration (2002-2011/2012)

4. Therapeutic Community Open Forum/RadioTC International (2005-2018)

5. "Wind Down the Week" Cross-Cultural Psychotherapy Event (2007)

6. Institute for the History and Work of Therapeutic Environments (IHWTE) (est. 2007)

7. "Therapeutic Living With Other People's Children: An oral history of residential therapeutic child care c. 1930-c. 1980" (2010-2011)

1 "Overview" to "Therapeutic Living With Other People's Children": statement of fundamental principles.

8. Solihull Alternative Provision Multi-Academy Trust

1. Dear Ralph, David, Katy...Look what you've done! (April 16-20, 2018)

9. "Archives of Change, Archives for Change", May 2-3, 2019: Residential workshop funded by British Academy/Leverhulme Grant
A parting gift to the Mulberry Bush Organisation.
1. Note to accompany "Archives of Change, Archives for Change" (2019)

APPENDICES TO PART II

Appendix II.1: "Introductions to a proposed special issue of the Therapeutic Communities journal (2019-2020): "to make the obvious observable in action but not seen"

Appendix II.1/1: Special Issue: Draft Introduction and Outline. August 14, 2019
Appendix II.1/2: A revised draft structure for the special issue, August 17, 2019
Appendix II.1/3: Draft Introduction to a special edition, June 28, 2020: "The magic of a therapeutic community archive"

PART III
TRANSITION AND CHANGE-OVER: THE MULBERRY BUSH'S PLANNED ENVIRONMENT THERAPY ARCHIVE AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

III.1: INTRODUCTION

1. Continuities

2. Discontinuities

1. 1. What's in a name? Renaming and recategorising: the colonial impulse
  2. A Catastrophe
  3. The loss of provenance
  4. A Rupture
  5. A Clean Break With (Others') Pasts
    1. Craig Fees, Response to the Mulberry Bush report "PETT Website [being taken down]" (27/6/2020)
  6. The question about 'folding'

APPENDICES TO PART III: CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY NOTES ON THE MB3 CATALOGUES AND DOCUMENTATION

Appendix III/1: Reinden Wood House Therapeutic Community, 1969-1980

Appendix III/2: John Armstrong interviewed by Chris Beedell, ND

Appendix III/3: Desmond and Anna Draper, 2012

Appendix III/4: A Rupture in understanding

Appendix III/4/0: Overview: Homer Lane Society, Homer Lane Trust, Homer Lane Trust Ltd.
Appendix III/4/1: Homer Lane Trust Archive
Appendix III/4/2: Homer Lane Society Archive
Appendix III/4/3: A missing catalogue: Homer Lane Trust Ltd. Archive
Appendix III/4/4: New Barns School Archive

Appendix III/5: The Planned Environment Therapy Trust

Appendix III/5/1: Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive
Appendix III/5/2: A missing catalogue: The Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive and Study Centre Archive
Appendix III/5/3: The Archive and Study Centre Oral History Programme
Appendix III/5/3/1: TC Voices : The Planned Environment Therapy Trust Oral History Project, 1989-2018
Appendix III/5/3/2: TC Events Collection : Recordings from conferences and events, 1987-2018
Appendix III/5/3/3: The Oxford Project Archive
Appendix III/5/3/4: Society of Archivists Celebrating Memory Transcripts, 1996-1999
Appendix III/5/4: Therapeutic Living With Other People's Children: an oral history of residential therapeutic child care c. 1930-c.1980 (HG-08-16728)

Appendix III/6: Therapeutic Communities Research Project, 1967-2007

Appendix III/7: The Oxford Project Catalogue: "a strong argument for building archival practice, as a matter of course, around the engagement of those who donate or loan or are represented in the collections"

Appendix III/8: Richard Crocket Archive

PART IV: IS A SUSTAINABLE CENTRE FOR THE HISTORY AND HERITAGE OF THERAPEUTIC ENVIRONMENTS POSSIBLE?