Archive of the Year Award for the Planned Environment Therapy Trust

On Saturday, February 23rd at the "Who Do You Think You Are? Live" exhibition in London ('the biggest family history event in the world'), the BBC broadcaster, historian, and Editor-in-Chief of 'Your Family History' magazine Dr. Nick Barratt presented the Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive and Study Centre with the prestigious Your Family History national "Archive of the Year" award. Past winners have included the Surrey County Council History Centre, and Kent County Council's Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre.

In presenting the award, Dr. Barratt quoted from one of the nominations: "Not only do they collect and curate a range of small yet important archival material and collections, including oral histories, but they also provide a space for people to share memories and experiences relating to environment therapy - so continue to undertake therapeutic work today. All this is done on a small budget, showing that you don¹t need millions of pounds to make a difference to people's lives."

Receiving the award for the Archive and Study Centre were archivist Craig Fees and team members Gemma Geldart and Chris Long, who were core team members of the award winning "Other Peoples' Children" project. PETT was so impressed with the work of the team and with the very real difference it made to people's lives that when the funding for the project came to an end, the Trust asked them to stay on, and to continue to develop their work with former children, staff and families from residential therapeutic communities, many of which are now closed.

The team at Trust see this award as an endorsement of the work it has been able to do, especially with the help of a Heritage Lottery Fund grant during its"Therapeutic Living With Other Peoples' Children: An oral history of residential therapeutic child care" project in 2010-2011. As well as students and young people, the team at PETT has been able to work closely with a number of people who were children in care, their families, and friends; and to discover and demonstrate how remarkably 'therapeutic' archives can be in practice.

More information about this event, Archive and Study Centre and other aspects of the work of the Planned Environment Trust can be found at PETT Archive of the Year Award Winners

This news item first appeared on the home page of the goodenoughcaring website on February 26th, 2013