“There is a story to tell every time people and objects meet.” Orhun Pamuk, The Innocence of Memories

Six months have now passed since the launch of the archive blog and Pamuk’s tale of museums and culture still resonates as the archive project develops into a cultural piece at the heart of the Tavistock Institute’s work. It will culminate with a festival in November 2017 to launch the completion of the first stage of the catalogue and to celebrate 70 Years of the Tavistock Institute’s work of ‘Becoming More Humane’.

It is a pleasure then to bring you this update on what we have been doing this year and with it the invitation to sign up for regular postings from the blog. We will continue to invite contributions from guest bloggers from the Tavistock Institute community; interested researchers and the archive team along with notices of and write-ups on our events and activities; emerging news on the 2017 festival: when and where it will take place; opportunities to participate.

So what has been going on?

• A Summer of Dreaming with the acclaimed Social Dreaming matrices in the Wellcome Library that not only spanned the phenomenon of Brexit but also explored the emotions at work in bringing archive into public access.
• September marked the release of the first batch of archive material, the registered document series, at the Wellcome Library for all to explore. These papers – the registered document series (SA/TIH/B/1) – provide a framework for the research and outputs of the Institute from 1945 to 2005, containing key reports and findings from seminal social studies from the post-war period to the early 21st century.
• In October Juliet Scott will be showing her first work as artist in residence of the archive project. Object Relations is the title of the exhibition taking place at the Helmsley Arts Centre, Yorkshire, running from Sunday 2nd October to Friday 28th October 2016.
• Alice White gave a lunchtime talk from the perspective of her doctoral research focussing on what the Tavistock archive restores to our picture of resettlement by providing insight into the people, processes, challenges and opportunities behind the Civil Resettlement Units of the 1940s.
• The ‘inside out, ‘showing the workings’ methodology exemplified in the project blog and the participative events and activities is being acclaimed as an innovation in archival practice and we will continue to push the boundaries of what it means to be doing this work for the organisation; its wider community and society.

Reasons to sign up to the blog? Archivist Elena Carter is cataloguing some of the significant projects including papers of the War Officer Selection Board, A.K. Rice’s papers; the Glacier Metal Project; and the Calico Mills. The WOSB papers chart the Tavistock group’s early involvement in wartime efforts to apply psychological methods to the recruitment and selection of war officers. We’ll be running further events in the Wellcome Library Reading Room to coincide with the release of these papers. Also watch this space and others for a lunchtime talk given by staff members who have been excavating the material to tease out the anthropological thread running through the Tavistock Institute’s work.

Don’t miss a post! Join us at the blog for more Tavistock Institute archive updates.

TIHR Archive Project team: Elena Carter, Amanda Engineer, Antonio Sama, Juliet Scott, Hannah Walsh.