The piece
I always come back to, is when I was asked to make a work in Barking and
Dagenham which, I had assumptions about. I thought it was a working class area
which probably had a history of racism, I knew there was a trial coming up
there for someone who’d had racist treatment. I knew it was also
somewhere where the women of Dagenham factory had made a stand, early in the
feminist movement. So there was a history of working people, but really
struggling I think.
I came and found what else they were struggling with.
I was very worried about me as a middle class, white woman coming in and making
a work for that community and then buggering off. It didn’t feel right.
I thought, if I’m going to make a public work of art,
what can I make which is going to give something to the people, which isn’t
just plonked on them, that isn’t just seen as an eye-sore and waste of public
money. I also didn’t want to make a live work, I felt it was too risky, too
fleeting somehow. So I looked for a space that could house something for an
installation that was free.
So I made a
piece with Nic Sandiland. Something that was built for the central library in
Dagenham. It wasn’t as widely used as the shopping street but I draw the line
at commerce. I won’t make work where people are going shopping! So that was the
closest I could get to a public space. I was really pleased with what we made. I felt I was going onto
unchartered territory, so I wanted to work with children because I know I can
relate to children of a certain age 8-10year olds, wherever they’re from. I
worked for a year in a very forgotten little school. They’d never had artists
in. They had a huge asylum seeker population. That was really interesting to
work with young children who were trying to get a grip on where they lived,
where home was. I found it really sad and upsetting, but also really amazing
because the kids were just incredibly resilient to find their way. But dance
for them, I felt, did bridge the
language gap found a primary school. There were kids in the class who were
really struggling, but weren’t doing so after the project. It re-affirmed my
beliefs that imagination, and drawing on children’s imagination into their own
bodies, to actually transform themselves in their bodies is very empowering.
Which is probably why sport is so good for kids in those kinds of areas. I saw
these boys transformed when I told them they were ‘weathergods’ - they could bring the rain in or stop the
sun shining just with very slow gestures of the arms. A few of the boys, who
really didn’t speak much English, really did look like gods, and they knew it.
There was something about empowering them in a different way to fighting and
aggression. Interestingly aswell, their favourite bit was the relaxation. I
would put this music on and a lot of them would fall asleep! So that was a
revelation for me. When they taste this more gentle approach they like it.
It doesn’t work
so well now, kids are even more difficult to teach – that’s another thing I’ve really
noticed. Their energy is really different. I taught in a school in Hammersmith
and thinking I’m going to have to stop because all I can do is shout and I know
that’s not what I want to do. They were literally climbing the walls. I’m quite
experienced but there was something I was up against which felt impossible, it
was really depressing.
Square Dances too were a revelation for me because
there were certain things I hadn’t known would happen. I was confident that the
pieces would work. What I didn’t expect was that the audience would become
communities in themselves, in particular the women’s piece made them feel like
you. A flock of people. I saw them walking the streets together, talking, one
of my friends made a friend on a bench and they travelled around the rest of
the pieces together – like youth hosteling! Maybe something about a journey
which they wanted to share. I had not thought of what it might be like to be
one of the community of watchers. That was a lovely thing to discover, that
they were glad to have the time to walk the streets together and find these
pieces. I’m trying to find a way in which the audience feel really safe and
therefore open up a bit more. I’m trying to make sure they don’t feel excluded
from the dance. Make sure they know it’s for them – that’s very important to me
actually.
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