In the runup to the handover from the Planned Environment Therapy Trust to the Mulberry Bush Organisation towards the end of 2018, the two negotiating teams had still not addressed the Virtual Estate, the group of websites and Internet-based resources which the Archive and Study Centre had built, hosted, managed, and actively supported. This was where we engaged with various publics - it was like our very own Windsor Great Park, a part of the Crown Estate where the public can enjoy free access to the Windsor landscapes and their histories, with sites and amenities (see here), and be part of a wider national and international community (by virtue of the Empire). We weren't an empire, but we were a kind of commons; and the Virtual Estate was where much of that building and sharing of community and history happened. Another difference is, the community took an active role in the building and sharing, with a leading role in the existence of the websites, creation of content, and direction of travel.
Because it wasn't being addressed, and because we were approaching the cliff edge at which my role would end as Keeper of Usernames and Passwords; Tender to Updates, Troubleshooting and Renewals; and general Shepherd, Gamekeeper, Gardener and Caretaker for the Estate, I overstepped the boundaries of the negotiations, and made direct contact with the Mulberry Bush Person responsible for their online world. I shared all the codes and keywords with him in a spreadsheet, and began to explain things.
There was widespread anxiety and a degree of distrust among community members over the transition, but in an email to Pat Mitchell of the Wennington Association in particular, the assurance was made that the community websites would continue to be looked after as they had been. The punchline here is that that ultimately isn't what happened, and that all of the websites listed below have disappeared, except those which I agreed with the communities to help with, when the requirement to make a decision was put to them. That happened at the beginning of June 2019, six months after the handover, and after a fairly untidy period in handover and management.
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At the end of 2018 the Planned Environment Therapy Trust, via the Archive and Study Centre, was looking after four sets of websites.
The first set was pettrust.org.uk, the main Planned Environment Therapy Trust website, with a subsidiary "archive" site, which was a kind of holding place for delivery of pdf and other files formerly on the website which had preceded pettrust.org.uk by some years, pettarchiv.org.uk, and which were being used on other websites.
The second set consisted of subsections, and subsites within pettrust.org.uk itself, devoted to specific projects or communities. Among the subsections was the one devoted to Reinden Wood House Therapeutic Community discussed and featured elsewhere (see here). Among the subsites was one devoted to the Oxford Project, and another devoted to the Phoenix Unit project (for the latter, see here. The Oxford project wasn't saved by the Internet Archive).
The third set were those of communities, on standalone sites. There were three: Wennington School, Caldecott Community, and Dennie Briggs (this was the Living Archive website, as it had developed, mentioned in the last slide but one of the Visual Tour of the Archive, here). I will include a fourth website in this list, which otherwise belongs with Partnerships with other Organisations, because it was faced with the choice the Communities were in June 2019, to find a new host within two weeks, or to see their websites disappear. This was SquiggleTalks, now absorbed into the main website of the Squiggle Foundation.
The fourth set consisted of websites in partnership with other organisations: tc-of.org.uk, which was the website for the Therapeutic Community Open Forum, established in partnership with the Association of Therapeutic Communities, the Charterhouse Group of Therapeutic Communities, and the Community of Communities project of the Royal College of Psychiatrists; and cchn.org.uk, the website of the Child Care History Network.
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The websites disappeared in three stages.
The community sites were given notice in June 2019 that they had two weeks to decide what to do with their websites. They could make their own arrangements, and host their websites elsewhere. Or the websites would be taken down. Dennie Briggs was 92 and in hospital when his notice arrived. He emailed me in distress once he was out of hospital, with the deadline looming. I proposed taking personal responsibility for the website, and he emailed back to agree to that, which the Mulberry Bush also agreed to. We also agreed to meet again at the end of the week, when I had more time, to discuss things further. I learned from one of his close friends that he died later that day, which explained the silence on the Friday.
The Planned Environment Therapy Trust website disappeared without warning sometime between June 1, 2020 and June 11, 2020, at the height of the pandemic, when most archives, libraries and museums were racing to amplify their Internet presences. I assumed it was a glitch, but it turned out to have been taken off the public Internet and put behind the Mulberry Bush wall intentionally. I discuss this at length elsewhere (see 'here').
The websites of the Therapeutic Community Open Forum and the Child Care History Network disappeared some time later. There was no warning that I am aware of. The last successful Internet Archive capture for the Child Care History Network, cchn.org.uk, was July 24, 2021. The next capture, on August 1st, returned a "page does not exist" (fn1). The last successful crawl for the Therapeutic Community Open Forum, tc-of.org.uk, was on February 27, 2021.
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What has been lost in terms of content can be discussed elsewhere, in the positive terms of what these websites contributed to the knowledge and awareness of therapeutic communities and their histories. Their role in drawing people into the orbit of therapeutic community, and building a public can be discussed. What they meant for those who had a place to gather memories and interactions among generations, and the discoveries of information and documents these brought into the Archive and into the public domain. Their role in fostering belonging. Affirmation. Belief. Participation. And, of course, trust and goodwill. All can, will, and have been discussed in other papers, and in other chapters.
What we could discuss here is what it means for a new enterprise, a new Archive with Specialist Collections, building a new profile, engendering new relationships, creating a new future. What does it mean?
See:
"The Invisible Work of the Archive".
A 2016 note for PETT Trustees on the immense amount of content delivery going on unseen in the background of the daily work of the Archive, including obvious evidence of use in courses.
"A major resource goes offline", 13 June 2020 draft email of concern for the loss of the PETT website,
A circulated draft for a public statement of loss and concern, not published in the end.
Craig Fees, Response to "PETT Website" [being taken down] (27/6/2020)
The Mulberry Bush prepared a paper to explain why the PETT website was taken down. It featured questions of mould, maintenance and un-discoverability, among other things. I saw red flags. The "Response" immediately follows this chapter.
Footnote(s)
1. "it will continue to remain accessible":
In 2019 the late David Lane CBE wrote an article, "Making History Matter: The Child Care History Network" for the Mulberry Bush's Therapeutic Care Journal. This was to mark the launch on April 1, 2019, of the Child Care History Network as a sub-group of the Bush's International Centre for Therapeutic Care. In the article David said this of the CCHN website (the article is here):
Over the last ten years the main means of communication between members has been CCHN’s website. It has been used for many purposes – to alert members to forthcoming events or new developments, to record papers from conferences, to make contact with former alumni or colleagues, and to debate issues, whether historical or current, concerning services for children and young people. As a result, quite a quantity of material has been amassed on the website, and it will continue to remain accessible.
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