Who are we?

Background of Living Archive
Milton Keynes fifty miles north of London is the United Kingdom's fastest growing new town. Change has been a way of life for more than 40 years. A rural population has watched its old landmarks disappear. Newcomers have left their family and friendship support networks behind as they have moved to brand-new housing estates.

How do you help the old-time residents retain pride in their lives and histories that seem to be being destroyed in the name of progress? How do you give the new arrivals the experience of coming into a place which has a past as well as a future? These were the challenges which led to the establishment of Living Archive. It is a creative cultural and community development organisation whose Documentary Arts work is inspired by people's memories. It has developed its activities over the last 35 years and was formally established in 1984.

Using local lives and events as their starting point, Living Archive has created the most powerful expression of Milton Keynes’ social history: 11 large-scale musical documentary plays; over 50 films; over 20 books based on local reminiscence; photographic exhibitions; CD-ROMs, radio and video documentaries; sculpture events; community textile projects; dance shows; webpage design and creation; and digital stories. Local people of all ages and backgrounds have been actively involved in all stages of this work - in interviewing, research, in writing, performing, creating songs and music, sewing textiles, making costumes and stage props, organising exhibitions, editing books, and creating webpages.


Origins of Living Archive
Living Archive had its origins in the work of two individuals who were developing two quite separate fields of activity. Since 1974, Roy Nevitt, Director of Drama at Stantonbury Campus, with colleagues and members of the community drama group he created, worked to devise and direct large-scale local documentary plays and documentary-based school curriculum materials.

Simultaneously, as a community worker with Milton Keynes Development Corporation, Roger Kitchen, was collecting the oral reminiscences of people whose lives were being changed by the influx of newcomers to the place where they lived. These reminiscences were transformed into radio documentaries and, by means of a community publishing venture, into books.

This work aroused considerable interest in Milton Keynes and elsewhere. Others believed that what was being achieved in Milton Keynes could be achieved in other communities. This led to the foundation, in January 1984, of "The Living Archive Project", now known as Living Archive.

The Living Archive Project was established to achieve two purposes:

- to explore and extend the documentary arts work being done in Milton Keynes;
- to encourage, train and support others wishing to do similar work elsewhere.

Maggie Nevitt was appointed as its first part-time Development Officer, Roy Nevitt and Roger Kitchen as volunteer Co-Directors. During this time Roy Nevitt continued as Director of Drama at Stantonbury and Roger Kitchen was the Project Director of Inter-Action Milton Keynes, so each had only their spare time to contribute to the Project.

In its early days Living Archive was based in an office at Stantonbury Campus. In January 1992 Roger Kitchen became the full time General Manager, and in March 1992 the project moved to an empty shop in Wolverton before taking up residence in its current location, the Old Bath House in Wolverton. Roger resigned as General Manager in April 2003 to work as a freelance.


Living Archive Today
The current Living Archive Business Plan 2009-2011 has the following aims and objective

(A) Development of our Archive Collection

To ensure people’s experiences and memorabilia continue to be collected, respected, valued, celebrated and made widely accessible.

To do this over the next two years, we will: