I am writing this blog on the 1st October 2024. For me, this is an odd sort of anniversary, for it was on 1st October 1974 (i.e. exactly 50 years ago) that I formally joined the Open University. I know there are others still present in our Design Group who preceded me (Robin Roy, Dave Elliot to name but two), so I am by no means the longest serving person around here. But today is a day of note for me.
I joined the OU as a 21 year old (yes that’s the 21 year old me in the picture!) not in Design but Social Sciences (I swapped faculties a few years later), where I was their first full-time PhD student, situated in the New Towns Studies Unit. The OU then was a mere 5 years old, still in its pioneering days having nearly been snuffed out in 1970 by the Conservative Chancellor Ian Macleod. By 1974, Harold Wilson was back in government and the OU was building up its undergraduate numbers. PhD students were, however, a rarity. What is now STEM, the Technology, Maths and Science Faculties, all resided is a sea of huts, but in Social Sciences we had a brick building!! That was the old Geoffrey Crowther Building – now demolished to become the prairie garden next to Horlock.
Although based in Social Science, my PhD could easily have been in the then nascent Design Group. I was researching the personal mobility impacts of alternative new town designs. My supervisor, Ray Thomas, quickly introduced me to people like Godfrey Boyle in Technolgy’s Energy Research Group, where there were a few other PhD students and some technical transport projects underway. It was all a rather fun medley of electric-powered trikes, solar houses, alternative technology events at the brand-new MK Bowl, strange ideas thrown around, coupled with new courses being put together and presented in little more than a few months!
I really liked the visionary can-do, let’s explore yet let’s get things done culture of that time. On October 1st 1974 I hadn’t really understood the OU’s inclusivity mission and ethos, but almost by osmosis I realised I had found a real happy place in my life and my calling across to the Design Group (and the Wimpey 3 hut) had begun.
50 years later the OU has become a much more formal institution. Underneath the structures, committees, mission statements and business plans, is there still a visionary can-do, let’s explore yet let’s get things done culture? Do you know what – at least in the Design Group I think that sort of culture remains. Long may it be so.
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