[This was the first newsletter from the Archive and Study Centre. It was run off on a duplication machine on pink paper, in honour of the season, and posted manually - folding paper, stuffing envelopes, moistening stamps and sticking them on; filling a local post box]
P LANNED ENVIRONMENT THERAPY TRUST
ARCHIVE AND STUDY CENTRE
December 1994
Hello. Thanks to the help and support of a great many people, the Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive and Study Centre is now in the midst of its fifth year. It has been an active five years, and this is a seasonal newsletter to say thankyou, and to give you an idea of what we are and have been doing in those years.
The oral history programme is going strong. We have been given tapes of various talks and conferences, of the musicals put on at Bodenham Manor School, of Elizabeth Wills talking about her husband David, of interviews with Stuart Whiteley, Harold Bourne and other important figures in the therapeutic community world. We have encouraged recordings (the Archive makes grants of tapes, lends equipment, and offers advice and help), and the Archive itself has built up a significant body of recorded discussions on Maxwell Jones and his life and career, Barns Hostel School in Scotland, Peper Harow, Chaigeley School, Marjorie Franklin, Arthur Barron, Chalvington, Swalcliffe, the John Conolly Hospital, the Henderson Hospital, Hawkspur Camp for Boys, the Arbours Association, the Mulberry Bush School, Frank Mathews, and others. More recently the Archive has been supporting the research of Dr. Tom Harrison into the Northfield Military Psychiatric Hospital (where the term "therapeutic community" was effectively coined during the last war), contributing recordings of former patients and visitors to those of patients and staff made by Dr. Harrison and by the BBC, inspired by Dr. Harrison's work. We have also been actively adding to the historical and educational record by recording or helping to make possible the recording of lectures and conferences - the annual David Wills Lecture, for example, this year given by Chris Beedell; the Friends of Summerhill Trust Conference in September, entitled "Love in a Cold Climate"; the upcoming 25th anniversary celebration of the Arbours Association, a conference to be held in London in February entitled "Paranoia and Persecution".
The Archive has also given various small grants, for example to enable a thesis to be translated from the German. Our transcription of an interview between Marcello Macario and Stuart Whitely enabled its publication in a recent issue of Therapeutic Communities. We have begun the groundwork for our first monograph, on the life and work of Arthur Barron, to be published late next year.
Collections currently held by the Archive include the Marjorie Franklin (1877-1975) Collection, which includes over a hundred of her painting; personal and professional papers of W. David Wills (1903-1981); the Arthur T. Barron (1919-1993) Collection; the letters, notes, manuscripts and other materials assembled by Jonathan Croall in the course of his research for and writing of Neill of Summerhill: The Permanent Rebel; materials related to Otto Shaw, and the archives of Red Hill; the archives of Westhope Manor/Shotton Hall School (19491994); the Archives of the Q-Camps Committee (1935-c.1966), including the records of Hawkspur Camp for Men, one of the earliest of the therapeutic communities in England (1936-1940); copies of the archives of Barns School in Scotland (1940-1954); the archives of the Homer Lane Society, the Homer Lane Trust and the Homer Lane Trust Limited (1964- ); the archives of New Barns School (1965-1992); the archives of the Planned Environment Therapy Trust (1966- ); Dr. David Clark's papers relating to the founding and early years of the Association of Therapeutic Communities (1970-1982); Richard Balbernie's Cotswold Community (1967- ) Collection; significant collections concerning the Association of Workers for Maladjusted Children/ Association of Workers for Emotionally and Behaviourally Disturbed Children (1951- ); and several smaller collections relating, for example, to Chaigeley School, Frank Mathews and the Birmingham Society for the Care of Invalid and Nervous Children, Bodenham Manor School, Children's Social Adjustment Ltd., and Swalcliffe School under Richard Balbernie. Elements of Dr. Maxwell Jones' archive have already come in Archive, and his archive as such will ultimately be housed here. We have significant collections of photographs.
When the Archive started five years ago it was at a run. We have been running since, both to catch up with ourselves and to push forward in an area where there is a tremendous amount of work to be done. We are slowly and surely catching up, but we would be very grateful to he reminded of anything we may have forgotten and haven't done. We would also he grateful to learn of anything else you feel we ought to be doing.
With many thanks, with best wishes for 1995, and on behalf of the Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive and Study Centre. I am
Yours sincerely
Craig Fees Archivist
