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Goodbye to all that...

A website in the form of a book and a blog about the loss of a national treasure and an international resource

 

 About this website

 

CONTENTS 

 

The Author

Introduction to a Foreword (2026/03/15)

Foreword, February 27, 2026

PREFACE

Acknowledgements

Some notes and conventions

 

PART I: WHAT HAS BEEN LOST

 

I.1: A BEGINNING: Goodbye to all that

  1. The Archive: A visual tour
  2. "It may be that you have never heard of this archive..." In the words of others
  3. Origins
  4. Goodbye to all that: footnotes

 

I.2: WHAT HAS BEEN LOST?

1. AN ECOSYSTEM

      1. "But the roof doesn't leak when it stops raining": The target audience and the target task
      2.  "organisations and individuals behave stupidly, if not destructively....": Naked Self Interest and archives
      3.  Celebrations and funerals

 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: What came first: THE PLANNED ENVIRONMENT THERAPY TRUST, AND ITS ARCHIVE AND STUDY CENTRE 

 A background question:  In its public statements and public-facing documents, why did the Mulberry Bush not only obscure, but negate its Predecessor? 

 

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

  1. Origins: Précis of the Vision
  2. A History of the Planned Environment Therapy Trust (c. 2013)
  3. "A field which was notoriously profligate with and dismissive of its archival heritage..."
  4. Late papers on the nature, theory, and work of the Archive and Study Centre
    1.  What is a planned environment Archive and Study Centre?
    2. The specifically planned environment therapy archive
    3. The standard model of archives and archiving, and the model developed and practiced in the PETT Archive and Study Centre
    4. Fundamentals: The Archive, The Purpose of the Archive, and The Archive's Collections Policy (2018)

 

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. Handout at the Archives and Records Association Conference 2016: A quick guide to the 'Therapeutic Living' project

2 "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 TO THE SUCCESSOR: THE MULBERRY BUSH'S PLANNED ENVIRONMENT THERAPY ARCHIVE AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS 

III.1: INTRODUCTION

a. The transition that didn't happen; the handover that wasn't: Letter to the Senior Archivist, October 16, 2019

1. Continuities

2. Discontinuities

      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/4/0.5 The Plough Trust
     Appendix III/4/1: Homer Lane Society Archive
     Appendix III/4/2: Homer Lane Trust Archive
     Appendix III/4/3: Homer Lane Trust Ltd. Archive: A Missing Catalogue
     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 (Oral Histories)
     Appendix III/5/3/4: Society of Archivists Celebrating Memory Transcripts, 1996-1999
     Appendix III/5/3/5: 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 Squiggle Foundation Archive

Appendix III/8: Richard Crocket Archive

 

 

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

    1. If not, Why? What made it impossible?: A challenge to the field

 

 

PART V: ARCHIVES ARE PERSONAL 

PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES AND REFLECTIONS ON CREATING, BUILDING AND SUSTAINING AN ARCHIVE CENTRED ON TRAUMA, ITS RESOLUTION, AMELIORATION, AND FUTURE MITIGATION

1. Archives are personal: The roots of practice in an archive wrapped around trauma (and what has and can be done about it). Founding archivist Craig Fees interviewed by archivist, academic and researcherJennifer Douglas (2019)

2. Archives are Physical: The Adventure of physicalising care

 

APPENDICES TO PART V

Appendix V/1: "The Archivist Speaks`', by Craig Fees, Joint Newsletter No. 8, July 2003, p. 38

 

 

AUTHOR'S WORKING NOTES AND SCRIBBLES (NOT FOOTNOTES)

  1. Accuracy
  2. One of the problems of working in the midst of the background radiation from traumatic experience
  3. David Wills Quote
  4. How do you express the future
  5. Personal Formation 1: "Ay, tear her tattered ensign down..."
  6. Personal Formation 2: "the people with the sense of identity enough to do that, with the confidence of mutual belonging, and identity and belief in the future, became a nation which could carry out a velvet revolution.
  7. "What is the value of a more accurate historiography?"
  8. Narcissism

 

 

 

RESOURCES
(Reference Pool)

 

RESOURCES 1: Papers relating to the Archive and Study Centre written by Craig Fees

RESOURCES 2: Primary sources

 

 

 

 

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