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What is this about? See the chapter "A Clean Break With the Past" * When I discovered on June 11, 2020, that the PETT website had gone offline, I immediately wrote to the Chair of PETT, who felt it was important enough to pass on to the responsible folks at the Mulberry Bush. I assumed it was either a temporary measure to enable their conversion of the website from Joomla to WordPress to make it compatible with the Mulberry Bush website (as I had been told would be done; and quite logical), or that it was a glitch. In my email of the 11th I said "I hope it hasn't gone entirely. It will erase a great deal of PETT's work and be a disastrous loss of history and resources if it has." It had gone entirely, although I was told that a copy was being preserved and could be consulted in the Archive. To me it was counterintuitive that an institution devoted to the history and heritage of therapeutic environments, at a time of crisis, in the midst of the pandemic, would eliminate public access to such an extensive and deep resource for learning, research, social understanding and public advocacy; but that was the message that was given. I had no idea what to do. So I drafted a letter, and sent it to a number of friends and colleagues with the note: "I'm sharing the letter below with some friends and colleagues for thoughts and feedback. I'm not entirely sure what I will do with it yet, but assume I will circulate it to various email discussion lists at the beginning of the week. If you had thoughts, please share them." Someone - one of these people, or someone they shared it with - shared the draft with the Mulberry Bush, which was a shock; as was the response that came from the Mulberry Bush. The draft speaks for itself; but in the end I did not circulate it. The gumption wasn't there. I understand why Craig of the time didn't; but thinking as an historian, that he didn't I think was a mistake. One of the sequelae, if that's the right term (and it feels right), is that members of the Archive team received abusive emails as a result of this draft (I was told). Given the limited collegial and friendship group I circulated the draft to, I have not been able to get my head around this, and I was never given any details about the what or the whom, which would a) have allowed me to learn, and b) do something about it, including any reparations. The Mulberry Bush assumed I was to blame, in a causal, orchestrating sense, and I was prohibited from communicating directly with any member of the Archive staff going forward. All communication had to go through the Project Manager.
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Dear - ,
In the midst of a global pandemic, when archives, museums and libraries around the world are closed to the public and energetically seeking ways to push more material from their collections online; in the week that Eira Tansey's powerful "No one owes their trauma to archivists; or, the commodification of contemporaneous collecting" burst across the archives and heritage scene; when statues were toppled, and people everywhere were asking the question: "How should we be celebrating the innovators and builders of stronger communities and a better society?", the website of a charity founded 54 years ago to do just that, which established an Archive and Study Centre based around the records and memories of traumatic experience and creative and therapeutic responses to it - which gained two national awards through engaging and involving the people behind the records - was taken offline. Almost a quarter of a century of the Archive's life and work disappeared overnight, eclipsing the voices and the rich historical resources which the website offered to the world.
That archive was the Archive and Study Centre of the Planned Environment Therapy Trust, for which I was the founding archivist. I came across the absence of the Trust's website with a great sense of sadness and loss, having used it the week before to share a blog post by one of the pioneering teachers in residential child care after World War II, who had just died. Fortunately, a copy will be preserved in the digital store of the Archive and Study Centre's successor, the Planned Environment Therapy Archive at MB3 in Gloucestershire, where it can be consulted; and there is a version on the Internet Archive, although it is missing major sections and resources.
What has disappeared, and is no longer searchable online?
From the archives: the original manifesto, photographs, and transcribed correspondence from the Honorary Secretary of the Q Camps Committee to the warden of its Hawkspur Camp for men (1936-1941), recognised as a seminal therapeutic community for working with mental health, social disturbance and delinquency in young men; a blog post by Sam Doncaster of Wennington School, describing the origins and history of a painting in the Archive which had been given to his parents by a post-war art teacher at Ledston Manor School, a residential school for "maladjusted children" as the term then was, where his parents were staff members; images and transcribed childhood diaries of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Marjorie Franklin, and her diary as a young doctor near the front line in France, and the beginning of World War I. And more.
From oral history: Transcripts and recordings of pioneers in the therapeutic child care field - the digitised voice of George Lyward, talking about his work at Finchden Manor, where musician and broadcaster Tom Robinson found his life turned around; David Wills talking about life at Barns Hostel and School during World War II, in separate recordings from the late 60s and early 70s; the sister of Harry Karnac, friend, colleague and publisher of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, talking about their childhood in East London, and taking part in the battle of Cable Street; Mrs. Margaret Jacobson, interviewed by a young archivist as part of the oral history module at the Centre for Archive and Information Studies at the University of Dundee, on her experience at Beacon Hill School, famously associated with philosopher Bertrand Russell, but the real creation of his wife Dora. And more.
From the library: The entire twelve-issue run of the "Joint Newsletter" (2001-2004), produced together by the Association of Therapeutic Communities, the Charterhouse Group of Therapeutic Communities, and the Planned Environment Therapy Trust, with early appearances from the Royal College of Psychiatrist's Community of Communities project, and a primary source for the history of the era; 21 theses and dissertations, including a commissioned translation from the Dutch of Stijn Vandevelde's Belgian thesis on "the father of therapeutic community", Maxwell Jones, David Clark's MD thesis, and thirteen dissertations from the immensely influential Reading University Therapeutic Child Care Course; conference papers and book chapters. And more.
Original material: a commissioned conversation, in blog-post form, between Clinical Psychologist David Kennard who wrote one of the foundation texts on therapeutic community, and Dr. Bob Hinshelwood, psychiatrist, Clinical Director of the Cassel Hospital, and founding genius of the Therapeutic Communities journal; original articles by Dr. David Clark, Physician Superintendent of Fulbourn Hospital in Cambridge, W.H.O adviser, post-war therapeutic community pioneer; and by Dennie Briggs, detailing his work in developing therapeutic communities in military psychiatric hospitals during the Korean War, and in California prisons and work camps; blog posts by former children in care, and contributors to the field. The entire set of retrievable podcasts from RadioTC International (2006-2009; all but a handful of the nearly 300 podcasts which were made), including Dr. Rex Haigh's pioneering podcasts from the field, visiting therapeutic communities; interviews by the European Federation of Therapeutic Community's Anthony Slater, speaking with addictions workers and residents at conferences and settings from throughout the world; and recordings from the Archive itself, with researchers, donors, visitors, and video from the water tower of Hollymoor Hospital in Birmingham (site of the Northfield Experiments in World War II), now all torn down. And more.
The record of service to the community: Having one of the first websites of an archive service in the U.K., the Archive and Study Centre used its resources to introduce others into the virtual world, creating and hosting the first website for the Society of Archivist's Film and Sound Group; setting up the email discussion group for the Charity Archivists and Records Managers Group, and the Oral History Society's Regional Network (both of which are still going), as well as their first websites for a prison therapeutic community, two NHS psychiatric facilities, two other national therapeutic community organisations, and multiple email discussion groups. Recordings of talks, meetings and events made for the field, and shared online - The talks in celebration of the life of Dr. J. Stuart Whiteley, who was Director of the Henderson Hospital (1966-1988); Dr. Clare Gerada, Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, and Prof. Sue Bailey, former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, speaking at the Enabling Environments annual event in 2014. And more.
And more.
Dr. Craig Fees, RMARA
"To remember well is itself to celebrate, commemorate, honour, and preserve"
Eira Tansey's very powerful "No one owes their trauma to archivists" is at
