Back in March 2019, three months after the handover from PETT to MBO, I wrote to Rich Rollinson. One of the communities which had made an annual home at the Centre, as a place of retreat for their urban-based young people, were finding the new roadblocks and especially the costs newly required, far beyond anything they could manage, and they weren't finding a sense of working-with and of knowing the history of the relationship on the part of MB3 to try to find a way to make their annual visit possible. Another community, faced with the same thing, simply went elsewhere; but Toddington provided such a unique and therapeutic environment that there was really no place else for this community to go. Rich had been the Director of PETT, and was the Chair of the Mulberry Bush Trustees, and was in a difficult position. Ultimately, and I suspect it may have been his personal investment of finanical support in whole or in part which made it possible, the community was able to come again. But as part of the community's quest, I wrote in support to Rich:
If you were able to conjure up funds to make this year possible for [the community] that would be amazing, to say the least. And imagine if this could spearhead the creation of an ongoing fund embedded in the Toddington operation. We never had the people/resources that MBO can call on, as you rightly pointed out on many occasions; and you can imagine how impossible it must seem to an overstretched community [like this one] to add a crowdfunding campaign on top of everything else they have to do. I wonder if your initiative could be used to inspire the Bush to mobilise its skills and resources to establish a dedicated, permanent [Fund for this community, to enable the annual visits]...
enlisting the skills and energies in the communities I've written about in the introduction to Section 5, to help bring in funds.
And then imagine the model rolled out to others. One can even imagine an Endowment for MB3 itself, to secure it absolutely (a properly protected Endowment Fund, not like the one at PETT!). Many of us would wish to contribute to it.
PETT had projected an Endowment of £500,000 as a stabiliser for an ongoing Archive. It is another story, but it was my task, assigned in the early 2000s, to raise it or, alternatively, £50,000 annually, to save my job and the working Archive. I did not manage either, and in 2005 was made redundant and rehired on a part-time basis, on a rolling monthly contract.
I then went on to say:
As for me, I am always willing to be called upon if the Mulberry Bush feels I have something to offer; but a very clear message was set out in many ways and on numerous occasions throughout the past two years, which I took on board and have honoured: although my past contributions were valued, for whatever reasons both the PETT Trustees and the Mulberry Bush did not wish me to be involved either in the negotiations or in the future.
Those messages included Rich telling me in the first part of 2018 that the Mulberry Bush regarded me as persona non grata; and the occasions included an event in November 2017 when users, community members, existing archive donors, and anyone interested in the future of the Archive and Study Centre were invited to a 'Stakeholder Visioning Day' at the Mulberry Bush, facilitated by Jennie McShannon of Tavistock Consulting, part of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. I wasn't part of the organising, and wasn't supposed to speak; and only did so through Jennie's forebearance and generosity, to say that it was up to the people in the room - the stakeholders - to ensure the future of the Archive, and that I had done what I could (in effect. I don't really remember what I said. The event, with notes shared about it by people who were there, is captured in PETT eNewsletter 31, January 11, 2018, which gives a useful contemporary sense of the nature of the ecosystem of the Archive and Study Centre, involving numerous stakeholder voices).
The Transition
'The Transition', for the purposes of this book, is a roughly two year period which begins with the onset of discussions between the Mulberry Bush and PETT, and concludes with the end of the six month period the Mulberry Bush set aside after the handover for a dedicated assessment and transformation of the site. The fulcrum, which divides the The Transition into two parts, is the handover itself, the earliest moment of which would have been the afternoon of December 18, 2018, when or after I handed in my keys. It would be interesting to nail down when things like insurance, a reason I was given for needing to be off the site and not working out my contract to the end of the month as I had hoped, along with ownership and responsibility, actually kicked in.
As for dates, I can't, at this moment (January 17, 2026), recall when the discussions between the Mulberry Bush and PETT first began, and as they will have begun at Director and Trustee level I might not have known then. The absolute terminus post quem is early September 2017, when I was tasked with writing a Visioning document by the PETT Trustees, which they adapted and adopted, for a Visioning meeting with the Mulberry Bush at the end of September on the future of PETT, the Archive and Study Centre and the Mulberry Bush itself. The terminus ante quem for me is the appointment in August 2019 of a new senior archivist, signalling the end of the Mulberry Bush's interim period of preparation, with renaming of areas and features, and a thorough airing and shaking out of the blanket inherited from PETT.
{There is more to come. This is an Introduction in progress}
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