The evening started with a showing of the 1970 New York documentary Childcare – People’s Liberation, which showed how a community-run childcare centre was both a much-needed step out of isolation and a move towards liberation, by not only providing children with a chance to play and make friends but also providing carers with the opportunity to meet others and develop relationships of their own. Shot mostly on the streets of New York City, the women interviewed expressed a collective feeling of isolation and frustration at a lack of suitable play spaces for their children, and of not having a voice that was listened to when asking for help from local government.
Change happened when a group of these mothers came together to form a community childcare space in a disused building. The building was in a terrible state of disrepair, but the community came together to fix it up and, working voluntarily in shifts, mothers and fathers created a child-centred space where children could play and form friendships. It was particularly inspiring to see the children’s sense of freedom even within this predominantly urban environment, as well as the forward-thinking attitudes of parents running the centre, with the same ethos around free-play, the outdoor environment, child-led play and diversity that we uphold today.
The film in essence showed the importance of childcare for both mothers and children, the rights of a child to access explorative play, and, most of all, the power of a like-minded community when pushed to take action.
One, Two, Three: The Story of the Children’s Community Centre at Dartmouth Park Hill, London (1975) delved deeper into the conflicts that arose between parents happy to volunteer in their community nursery and those that had to go out to work. Ultimately, this led to a general feeling of polarisation, with working parents feeling they were losing their say in the structure and principles of the nursery. Parents spoke of a class divide.
Some volunteers felt it wasn’t right for parents not to take part in the rota – they were going out to work to ‘make money for nice things’ while others supplied free childcare. The council was very interested in this free childcare set-up – parents supplying free care with no cost to the government purse seemed very appealing. The film ended with the Mothers in Action group who ran the centre wondering whether it was best to help other community groups set up similar childcare centres, or spend their time backing the national campaign for free daycare.
The last film of the evening was If the good Lord had intended, presented by the London-based Rydevale Community Nursery, and made with the Community Programme Unit for Open Door TV (1980). The title refers to comments from the interviewee at the start of the film, expressing his opinion that if mothers were supposed to work, God wouldn’t have made both men and women. This documentary had a greater focus on the nursery environment, showing how every effort was made to create a diverse, all-inclusive environment – with at least one male member of staff and staff from a wide ethnic background representing the local community. The film also showed some of the desperation felt by mothers isolated by their stay-at-home role. As with the other films shown, the community-run centre faced continual struggle with lack of funds, but the determination to not only supply free childcare but also the play-based, explorative play culture parents wanted for their children drove the project forward.
The evening closed with an informal discussion on the challenges faced by childcare providers and parents seeking affordable childcare. One attendee said she could only afford to go to work three days a week, as childcare is so expensive, while the American student who helped to put this night together as part of her PhD said in the USA, as in the UK, it is assumed that grandparents will take on childcare – whether they want to or not – with both parents needing to work because rent and mortgage costs are so high. We also spoke about current protests against childcare cuts and closures, including those by nursery workers in Wandsworth and Hackney.
It was inspiring to see parents coming together to create community-based childcare, and frustrating to see that more than 50 years on, affordable childcare is still unobtainable for many. The consensus was that families are still let down by whatever government is in power, and while attitudes to women in the workforce may have changed, after all this time we are not any better off.
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The archival film night was organised by PhD students Arielle Lawson and Frankie Chappell with On the Record’s Grow Your Own oral history project on London childcare
