Interview with Tina Strutton (b.1952).
Tina Strutton came to Milton Keynes in 1973 to work with teenagers having problems settling into MK on the Lakes Estate, on the Adventure Playground scheme. She describes some of the activities she ran, adn the community spirit on the Lakes. She recalls the mobile shops which delivered to the Lakes Estate and remembers celebrating the opening of Sainsbury’s. Next she ran a magazine launched by Milton Keynes Development Corporation, written by herself and young people at Peartree Bridge.
During a year living in West Bletchley, she was involved, with Matilda Kessler, in setting up a women’s refuge. She found the attitudes of some residents to her, as a lone parent, and to MK, disappointing. She then describes how Spencer Street Co-op was set up. MKDC agreed to renovate the street for the co-op, once a preservation order had been obtained. She was one of the first residents. She talks about local attitudes initially to the residents of the Spencer Street commune, who were seen as ‘hippies’.
On healthcare, she describes the high level of problems met by health workers among incomers and comments that a hospital was very low on MKDC’s priority list. Talking of the Wolverton Agora, she says: ‘They killed a thriving community and a thriving centre by building it.’ She managed an unemployed worker’s centre there, at a time of very high unemployment. Changes to MK she would like to see are more housing for young people who grew up there and improvements to public transport. Particularly strong memories for her are work with Interaction, particularly their Firework nights, and the 1977 Jubilee. She also loves the concrete cows, and recalls the idea of having ‘concrete cabbages’ along V7 and V8.
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