A human ecosystem is bound together by its rituals and celebrations.
One of the joys of living and working as an archivist in the kind of Archive we created together is becoming a part of other people’s lives, and being accepted into conversations and communities as another member; as one’s self, but also as one’s self as having an archival concern and memory, where “archival” is carrying some interesting privileges, based on the anticipation that your care for the community and its meaning in and for the world is a care and commitment for its past and its future, as well as its present; and is ongoing and genuine. This builds up gradually, over time, through being-experienced, at work, and in action, and through reputation. There are certain consequences which come with this acceptance and privilege, which include enduring duties of care and confidentiality.
But it goes well beyond, and this quickly becomes a very big topic, which I can't fully develop here, morphing into the consequences for the structure and nature of the Archive itself and its containing environment, as a place of belonging; because belonging involves mutual obligations and responsibilities, which translate back into care and mutual celebration. We saw something of this at work in the Introduction to Part One Section 5: When the containing environment calls for help and the call is understood, the help comes: not always directly, although that too, but in the ways and byways that the relations in mutual belonging have opened up.
As when a senior figure in the therapeutic community world dies, the daughter phones, because you are on the list of people he left to be informed; and you have the opportunity to hear the news directly, before it is more generally known, and before you might encounter it indirectly; so you have time to talk briefly but at length about them, with someone they loved and who loved them. An act of extraordinary posthumous generosity, rooted in the ways and the byways through which they had your home phone number, so that even having been out of the Archive for several years, you were there to pick up.
That presence at death which comes naturally with the archival self: While still very much in the Archive, phone calls came on two separate occasions which became extended celebrations of a life and a process of grief over numerous phone calls, tapering off naturally over the weeks as the grief moved on. Beyond the Archive - because belonging and the archival self don't end when the job comes to an end, and friendships remain - the call comes to come now.
My earliest funeral as an archivist was Josephine Lomax-Simpson’s in 1999, ten years in, when I was one of the few invited outsiders, and was asked to co-ordinate the obituaries. My last was in 2023, five years after the Archive closed. There were 28 celebrations of life and funerals from that first to that last: of former children, former workers and professionals in the field or alongside the field, a family member. I spoke at some, having known the person through oral history and working with their archives, and so knowing their place and contribution to things in a way that others speaking usually couldn't. My words, during Covid, were spoken remotely at another. I recorded the celebrations of life for some. A selection from a life-story recording I’d made was played at another, in which I can be heard laughing. That was a surprise. And many I simply attended, and met family and friends.
All over the country, in pubs, crematoria, churches, a tithe barn, a private members club, an Oxford college, a Cambridge college, private houses, Zoom during Covid, Quaker rooms, a village hall, a functions room in one therapeutic community, a repurposed sports hall in another, a celebration of life among the tennis courts at Wimbledon, others hosted at the Archive itself...
Death is a part of life, and always close to an archivist because of the nature of so many of the materials we handle. But presence at Life is also one of the immense privileges of a living, involving archive. Over the years I was invited to help celebrate the birthday of a senior member of a community in London, and with my family to 70th, 80th and 90th birthday celebrations, one on a heritage ship among people who had been in a therapeutic community together. My wife and I have been invited to two weddings, many years apart. I recorded celebrations of retirements. No christenings or their equivalents yet.
And there are lives of communities as well: reunions, anniversaries, and even crushing moments of death. Meetings, and conferences, and Archive Weekends.
So many occasions of the binding and building that an ecosystem is, and now being lost. The accrued trust and reputation in the institution. The investment of generations in the outcomes and possibilities which will now not happen. That joy in an ever-expanding sense of an ecosystem of care and belonging which is thriving, in which trust has rooted, and in which belief is unfolding...
<!-- 2026-02-11>
