Interview with Colin Barrett (b.1954).

Having trained in film and photography, Colin Barratt obtained a three-year contract in Milton Keynes in 1977, funded by Milton Keynes Development Corporation and British Telecom, working as a ‘project animator’ for Community Access TV station Channel 40. He describes the organisation and talks of colleagues such as Bill Billings, Bob Jardine, Jane Turner and Dusty Rhodes, and councillors Sam Crooks and Kevin Wilson. He discusses communication issues – technology, cable, broadband, internet, video.

His initial accommodation was a flat in Springfield. While there, he remembers getting a cooker from the Tugboat scheme and using Dial-A Bus. Later, he married and moved to Bradville, then in 1982 to Pennyland. He says: ‘for the first five years that I lived in Milton Keynes I hated the place’. He gives his views of the early days of MK, including topics such as housing, roads, transport and the social problems caused by lack of facilities and isolation. In his opinion Milton Keynes is ‘hugely successful’. Although it doesn’t give him exactly what he wants, in the future he hopes that it may develop into a proper community. ‘We had the strength to see our way through it … we’ve persevered with it and I’m glad we did.’