Interview with Roger Kitchen (b.1946).
Roger Kitchen came to Milton Keynes as a Community Worker for the Milton Keynes Development Corporation in 1971. He settled in Wolverton, initially working on Galley Hill estate with Margaret Leaver; they ‘set the blueprint for the role’, helping to set up local organisations and a newspaper, The Noose. In his opinion Galley Hill had a sense of community, but he recalls resentment in Wolverton about the coming of MK. After three years as a Community Worker, he then worked at MKDC on education and youth development liaison; he became Senior Community Worker for Woughton and then co-director of Inter-Action.
Roger describes the inspiration behind the setting up of ‘The People’s Press of Milton Keynes’ in 1975, and his liaison with Stantonbury Campus Drama Group to produce other documentary plays based on local history. He remembers: ‘We set up, I think it was the ‘Documentary Sub Committee of Stantonbury Campus Drama Group, … and we were doing a play a year.’ This work led to the setting up of Living Archive. Roger also talks of Jock Campbell and Fred Roche, and the visionary days of MKDC; Talking of his belief in the benefits of community arts he says: ‘through the kind of activities that Living Archive have been involved in … we have got something that other people haven’t got … it has been the most amazing thirty years of just endless opportunity.’
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