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The work of the Living Archive of Milton Keynes is impossible to describe in a few neat sentences. ‘A creative cultural and community development agency,’ is their current tag, and that’s a good start. Initially it was an attempt to construct a bridge between old North Bucks- Wolverton, Stony Stratford, Bletchley and the villages - and the new city of Milton Keynes.
For our purposes, though, we concentrate on the series of plays put on by the Archive in conjunction with the Stantonbury Drama Group, through the ‘80s and ‘90s. These were dramatic reconstructions of local events based entirely on spoken and written evidence, assembled by Roger Kitchen, Roy Nevitt and many others, and accompanied by music written and played by a ‘shifting assemblage’ of local musicians.
This shifting assemblage crystallised into the concept of a Living Archive Band during the 1990s- it was the musical wing of the Archive, and was called on not only to provide music for the plays, but to perform in a variety of concert situations, as ambassadors for the Archive and in celebration of the history and identity of North Bucks and the new city of Milton Keynes.
Perhaps the high point of all this endeavour was a revival of the play ‘All Change’ in 1999, which played for one frenetic night at the brand new Milton Keynes Theatre as part of its opening week’s celebrations, before moving in for five more nights at Stantonbury.
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