Interview with Bill Billings (b.1938).
Bill Billings first heard about MK when living in Luton in 1972; it offered a new chance, so he applied for a council house and, as a qualified engineer, obtained a job at Willen Sewage Works. He recalls his first impressions of MK and of Milton Keynes Development Corporation offices at Wavendon. He comments on the allocation of people to estates by MKDC; he was given a house on Netherfield. He remembers showing Lord and Lady Campbell the mess and mud supposed to be a ‘designated play area’ at the back of his house, when they visited, and her comment ‘How do people put up with this?’ Nothing was done so he built a concrete play train, and then more play areas and was congratulated by Jock Campbell.
Bill talks of his artistic activities, including cartoons for an ‘underground’ newspaper in MK called ‘City Limits’. He remembers smuggling paintings into an exhibition, into the David Baxter Center and the MKDC offices; he comments that people always seem to respond well to his work. He comments on the attitudes of some MKDC staff. In his opinion, MK has not succeeded in developing a true community because families have been split up. He thinks it will become ‘characterless’. Children have no standards to live up to.
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