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2. Barns House and around: What a busy month!
Groups have been coming and going through the meeting rooms and on-site accommodation at a great pace (have a look at "Kind words from visitors", below); and geysers of summery sounds of drilling and building are coming from upstairs:
Having completely refurbished Barns House over the past two years, Simon Rossi has turned his attention to the old building, the core of which was built in the 1970s by teams of volunteers, and the resident adults and children of the community which was then here. Refurbishing in such a lovingly built and lived-in 40 year old building quickly turns into re-construction, with all the diverse skills of builders, plasterers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, decorators and escape-from-Colditz improvisers called into play in one person in order to re-create kitchen and bathroom, re-build loft and utilities spaces, and re-awaken life in the three bedrooms which stretch along the upstairs corridor. Given the comfort and beauty Simon brought to the accommodation building, we are looking forward with great anticipation to the revelation of the New Upstairs.
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3. Summer, and the Kaki Tree explodes in leaf:
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4. Kind words from visitors
From a visiting school group, July 2015:
Member of staff:
"We really did find a gem when we came across your lovely accommodation. We loved the residential block and the gardens outside were just beautiful.
"Thanks to you and your team for all your efficiency from the initial booking right to the wonderful catering! Nothing was too much trouble and you all made us feel very welcome."
Student:
"We love the Barn's Centre. It's very nice here. It's been like staying in a big park. We've been very well looked after and homemade lasagne was beautiful! Hope we can come and stay again! Thankyou."
From J.G., also July 2015:
"Thankyou so much for a lovely stay. The food was delicious and the staff so friendly and welcoming. The rooms were lovely and comfortable and the grounds tranquil. An ideal place to feel nurtured on our yoga retreat."
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5. Congratulations
to Verusca Calabria, who has been awarded a fully funded PhD position at Nottingham Trent University to carry out an oral history with former patients and staff in the psychiatric hospitals of Nottinghamshire. These include Rampton, and Mapperley. (In a 1997 interview with David Kennard held in the Archive, David Clark indicated something of the significance and influence of Mapperley's Physician Superintendent, Duncan Macmillan:
"...until 1948, all medical superintendents were senior men. Now amongst those there were a certain number of people who had had just this same passion as I had. Duncan Macmillan of Mapperley, T.P. Rees of Warlingham, Joshua Carse of Graylingwell. Men who had waited until they became superintendents, and then started trying to change things." CF202 February 15, 1997)
This is going to be an exciting three years!
to The Oral History Society, which re-emphasised its support for Special Interest Groups at its recent AGM. The 'Oral History and the Psycho-Social Therapies' SIG is preparing to hold its launching conference at PETT in the Spring. Join us! Have a look at the interim website, nested within the PETT website, and get in touch.
to The goodenoughcaring journal - "the online publication for all those interested in the way children grow up and how they are nurtured", which has just published a special issue dedicated to The Mulberry Bush School and Organisation, with articles by CEO John Diamond, John Turberville, Caryn Onions, Annabelle Rose, Zoe McCarthy, Andy Lole, Dave Roberts and Ray Burrows: a veritable Mulberry Bush festival. See and read here.
to The National Centre for Therapeutic Residential and Foster Care with the launch of the first/July 2015 issue of the new Therapeutic Care Journal - enjoy articles by Keith White, John Diamond and more! at the new website here.
to Aggie Forster and colleagues at Braziers Park, who have set up an online forum for people interested in working together to carry forward the idea of a new kind of university (/anti-university?). For information or to join the forum, contact Aggie Forster.
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6. Thank you volunteers!
- Helen Moore, whose transcription of an interview recorded last year by Craig Fees with Michael Selby, the first non-medical Governor of HMP Grendon, has now flown off to Mike Selby.
- Linnet McMahon, who transcribed Marjorie Franklin's diary of a trip to Italy in 1907, featured on the website this month; and has transcribed Marjorie Franklin's diary of a visit to Yorkshire in 1903, when Marjorie was sixteen (watch future issues of the newsletter for its appearance. How does this young person grow into the woman who brought Donald Winnicott into direct experience of residential work with children?).
- Luke Sztymiak. Luke is stretching his proverbial experiential legs, and drops in to help when he is in town. If anyone needs an enthusiastic young person seeking experience in all areas of archives, building on a background in film, photography and digitisation, seek him out.
- Cynthia Brown, whose hand-made cards will be familiar to Christmas card recipients of recent years, and to visitors to the Centre, where their sale helps to supports our work at PETT ( Available at £5 for 5 +p&p - and a lovely way to support our work! Contact Craig).
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7. Note: The Archive and Research Library will be closed throughout the month of August, and again throughout the month of December, for essential maintenance, stocktaking, and holidays.
There is a high likelihood of other extended closures as we focus on applying for grants and catching up with backlogs: contact the Archivist for further information.
(And while we're talking grant applications: Please, we've topped and bottomed this newsletter with pleas for donations. The team here have all given in time and in other ways - it is wonderful when people join us.)
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8. Archive and Study Centre: What a busy month this has been!
Five minutes short of 14 hours of recording (not counting video!)...A slew of new resources on the website, as per below...The Caldecott Association's Archive Week - 551 scans, 33 transcribed documents, 42 newspaper articles located, 4 entirely new catalogues of collections, etc. etc. etc! (details here)...The Child Care History Network's summer conference recorded, edited and uploaded to the Internet (as per below)...Among the half dozen-plus new accessions, a trip down to London to pick up more of the exceptional Alan Wendelken Collection from his wife Claire; and, more locally, re-establishing a link with Gloucestershire psychotherapist Leah Elliott, who first gave us books and exciting testing materials a decade ago at one of our times of great transition...Looking at the impressive photographic material created by Alan Wendelken and others related to Finchden Manor with Townsweb Archiving's Simon Chandler-Barratt, to begin to assess the costs and requirements of their essential digitisation....Sending a box of "Therapeutic Living With Other People's Children" books/brochures (what on earth do you call them) to the Wellcome Library at their invitation, for a seminar to celebrate and launch the cataloguing of the MIND archive, an event at which Archive and Study Centre Patron Barbara Gold Taylor and three researchers who have carried out research in the PETT archives within the past ten years spoke/gave presentations (4 out of 7 named speakers - not a bad ratio!)...Several more shelves of books and publications catalogued by Fiona and Helen as part of the National Child Care Library assaying/piloting project...Playing host to three researchers, whose timings made it possible to cross paths for the fantastic cross-fertilisation that happens when researchers in related areas can come together (Georgina Capone, first year doctoral student in Clinical Psychology, currently researching outcome studies for adult democratic therapeutic communities while beginning a long-term case study of a therapeutic community unit; Kate Brown, attachment based psychoanalytic psychotherapist beginning a PhD on "The History of the Cotswold Therapeutic Community - psychoanalytic perspectives on love and hate"; Shama Parkhe from Bengaluru - see below!)....Hosting a meet and talk day, to take advantage of the visit of Shama Parkhe from the Hank Nunn Institute in India, bringing together the three researchers with psychiatrist and medical historian Tom Harrison, archivist Craig Fees, and practitioner and therapist Richard Olivier in an excellently deep and diverse day...Rushing against a fiercely pressing deadline to locate, scan and send two specific images relating to the Anti-University of London from the Joseph Berke/Institute of Phenomenological Studies Collection to former researcher Oisin Wall, curating "The Anti-University of East London: Public Participatory Anti Symposium at Open School East" for Hackney Museums on July 15th...and archivist Craig Fees meanwhile all over the place geographically, carrying out two one-day oral history trainings in North Devon as one of the Oral History Society/National Life Stories-at-the-British Library oral history trainers (staying with Pat Mitchell and Sam Doncaster of Wennington on the way), retiring from the Child Care History Network Board at their AGM in Leeds, having joined as a founding Board member in 2008; chairing an exciting session of the Oral History Society's two day annual conference at Royal Holloway University of London...
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9. New on the website!
Early psychoanalyst and therapeutic community pioneer Marjorie Franklin visited Italy for the first time during the school holidays at Christmas 1907. She was a student of Charlotte Mason's at the House of Education in Ambleside in the Lake District - and, as a star student, was later held up as an exemplar of Miss Mason's views on the education of Jews when her successors attempted to bar Jews from the school. Consider what was happening in Germany at that time.
This diary of Marjorie Franklin's visit was transcribed by volunteer Dr. Linnet McMahon, and includes a note of a side-visit by her mother to talk about the P.N.E.U., the Parents National Education Union. We have in our collections a report by the young Marjorie Franklin herself on a visit to see Montessori in action. Governess, teaching assistant, medical doctor, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, therapeutic community pioneer...who can be tempted into a research project on this remarkable and occluded woman?
Eighteen months after handing over the leadership of the Cassel Hospital in London to Dr. Kevin Healy, Dr. Robert Hinshelwood returned in March 1999 to address the Cassel's "Private Work in Public Places" conference, which also featured another keynote address by Anton Obholzer, then Chief Executive of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, on "The Management of Self and of the Task in Therapeutic Organisations"; not to mention open and closing remarks and ten parallel workshop sessions, all but two of which were captured by the Archive and Study Centre on DAT and a variety of audiocassette and reel to reel recorders.
"Therapy, Exposure and the Institution" is not included in Prof. Hinshelwood's Complete Bibliography, and unless it is among his personal manuscripts does not exist anywhere else. Neither does the richness of the voice nor the thoughtfulness of the delivery, through which one thinks and reflects alongside one of the recognised leading psychoanalysts of this generation. Introduction is by Lesley Day, of the Cassel Hospital.
Last year Shama Parkhe co-founded the Hank Nunn Institute in Bengaluru, India (old-style: Bangalore) with Anando Chatterji, the colleague and mentor she first met at Athma Shakti Vidyalaya, a nearby therapeutic community established by the Jesuit priest Fr. Hank Nunn SJ and Jacqui Schiff in 1979. The Hank Nunn Institute honours Fr. Nunn, who has retired as the Director of ASV; but it is setting out in a new therapeutic community direction, with an ambitious vision both for diverse specialised provision and training. Shama is in the U.K. exploring the range of therapeutic communities and trainings we have here, to infuse the Institute's programmes with the creativity that comes from deeper knowledge and awareness, and wider understanding.
In this 3 minute 30 second recording recorded at P.E.T.T. Shama talks about her professional background and the current and future work of the Hank Nunn Institute, and the things she is learning and seeing in the U.K.
Recorded by the PETT archivist, these podcasts of the presentations at the Child Care History Network's summer conference at Hinsely Hall in Leeds demonstrate the partnership that exists between the Archive and Study Centre and various places and organisations touching on the therapeutic field.
David Lane begins his talk on "Unintended Consequences":
"The Hinge Factor by Erik Durschmied is about a number of key conflicts which the author believes changed the course of history, such as Agincourt and Waterloo. One of the obvious ones in British history is the Battle of Hastings, which affects us even today in the blend of Anglo-Saxon and French which we speak. His book is subtitled How Chance and Stupidity Have Changed History.
"My proposition today is that the 1970s were an unrecognised hinge decade in the history of residential child care in this country, that we are still affected by the changes that were introduced then, and that there are lessons for us today in studying the way things happened.
"I would not wish to allege that stupidity has been a major factor on the part of the politicians and policy-makers who shaped child care services in the 1970s, but..."
Essential listening...And followed by the experienced and immaculately thoughtful John Burton, and a flow of experienced and grounded practitioners. How does a small volunteer group like the Child Care History Network put together such things? Join CCHN - Join its Email Group. CLICK HERE.
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10. New Dates for Your Diary
July 18, 2015. Critical Psychotherapy Network meeting: all welcome. Philadelphia Association meeting room, 4 Marty's Yard, 17 Hampstead High Street, London NW3 1QW, 9.45 a.m. for a 10.00 start to 12.45.
July 18, 2015. National Gathering and Annual General Meeting of the Care Leavers Association in Manchester. For fuller information contact the CLA.
July 28, 2015. Therapeutic Community Masterclass - Second Series. 11 a.m. to 3.00 p.m., Freud Museum, 20 Maresfield Gardens, London NW3 5SX (£25 includes lunch).
- Dr. Chris Nicholson, "'Kill the Pig': Psychoanalytic Groups and Therapeutic Communities. An Active Education Event."
- RSVP Yina Stent
If you have dates you'd like added to the Rolling Online Diary, please contact Craig Fees.
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If you haven't already, please consider a gift of time or money to enable our leaves of life to continue to emerge, explode and flourish.
You can make a gift-aided donation here.
and it really is very very appreciated
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