| Collecting Strand | National Resource Centre for Dance |
| Level | Collection |
| Ref No | AW |
| Title | AUDREY WETHERED AND CHLOE GARDNER ARCHIVE |
| Date | 1945-1995 |
| Extent | 71 files of papers, 18 books, 5 files of photographs, 3 issues of periodicals (catalogued material); 1 folder of uncatalogued material |
| Name of Creator | Wethered; Audrey G (1903-2001) |
| Gardner; Chloe E |
| Description | Audrey Wethered (1903-2001) initially studied at the Royal Academy of Music where she was awarded an LRAM (Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music), but then went on to train as a private pupil with Rudolf Laban, whom she met in 1953, at the Art of Movement Studio. She also studied with Lisa Ullmann, Warren Lamb and Marion North. Drawing on the work of Laban, Wethered's work focused on the use of movement principles in therapy with a range of client groups: psychiatric patients, people with learning disabilities, patients undergoing psychotherapy and depth analysis, and psychotic and maladjusted children.
Chloë Gardner graduated in 1944 from the London School of Occupational Therapy and went on to work at Springfields Hospital, London, in 1945. Previously she had studied concepts of Effort and Space at the Jooss/Leeder summer school in 1931 and then with Rudolf Laban, Lisa Ullmann and Warren Lamb. She too employed Laban movement skills in her work, and in 1950 moved to Friern Hospital, London as Deputy Head Occupational Therapist.
Wethered and Gardner sometimes worked together as professional therapists and as lecturers in movement therapy training. One major area of their work together was with three Sesame projects: working with schizophrenics at the Goodmayes Hospital, Ilford (1970), disturbed adults at the Leavesden Hospital, Hertfordshire (1972), and with autistic children at the Smith Hospital, Henley (1974). Although neither was trained in Sesame teaching methods, the studies were run and documented as Sesame projects. In another major joint project, Wethered and Gardner were visiting tutors at Cleveland University Summer School (USA) in 1987, where they gave lectures, classes and demonstrations on the use of movement principles in therapy. In 1973 Wethered published 'Drama and Movement in Therapy' (London: MacDonald & Evans); the second edition of which, entitled 'Movement and Drama in Therapy' (London: Jessica Kingsley, 1993), had a foreword by Chloë Gardner. They co-authored a chapter in 'Therapy Through Movement' (Lorraine Burr ed., Nottingham Rehab Limited, 1986).
The archive largely contains papers based on Wethered's application of Laban's movement principles in her clinical, workshop and written work, although it also covers Wethered and Gardner's joint projects. The papers include hand-written notes for practical sessions; detailed reports on the aims and objectives, the practical sessions, and the outcomes of the Sesame projects; lectures and papers on movement therapy; student notes, evaluations and essays; music scores; general correspondence; and Wethered's thesis, 'The Art of Movement in Health and Illness'. Of particular interest are Wethered's early notebooks documenting private sessions with Laban and classes with Marion North, Lisa Ullmann, Valerie Preston-Dunlop, Geraldine Stephenson and others. |
| Arrangement | The first deposit of the archive was preserved and catalogued as received. With the accumulation of the second deposit, some reworking needed to be made to follow the Data Protection Act and to eliminate duplication between deposits. Therefore, some files were reorganised and updated, and the remainder of the second deposit was added to the existing archive. Further preservation was made to fragile material. Wethered had titled the papers before giving them to the NRCD, and these titles were used in naming the files. Files documenting Wethered's Sesame projects were sorted so that each file contains just one project. |
| Accruals | No further accruals expected. |
| Related Material | See also: Rudolf Laban Archive, archive ref L; Lisa Ullmann Archive, archive ref LU; Betty Meredith-Jones Archive, archive ref BMJ, all held by Archives and Special Collections, University of Surrey. |
| Custodial History | Audrey Wethered deposited 6 boxes c. 1995 and her executors made a second deposit in 2001, in accordance with her wishes. In 2005, Judith Chapman deposited a folder of papers, possibly from the first deposit, which she had stored at her house (the folder is not yet catalogued). Preservation and cataloguing of the initial deposit were funded by a grant from the Follett Initiative; the second deposit by the Dance Data Online project grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Board. |