I might be the most fortunate, the luckiest of everyone who has lived these last four years. But I might, equally, make the opposite assumption, and believe myself to be the least fortunate. There is, as yet, no way to measure, and either conclusion could break the keel of my boat and pitch me mad into the black water. The things that used to mark the points between certainty and risk are still there. The old buoys are marking the sea-roads – from here, where my desk in the top room of this Georgian townhouse looks out over the sea, I can see them blinking at night – but the tidal waters have shifted the vast sandbanks under them, and nobody from Trinity House is coming to move the buoys to mark the change in circumstances. After all, there is no need. The tankers between here and the horizon haven’t moved for years. It is possible some of their crews are still alive, building a new life from whatever was packed into the hundreds of shipping containers from China and India, but it seems unlikely. Early on, some crews came ashore in small boats to ask for help from the locals, but like the Hartlepool Monkey, they DAN THOMPSON STUFF DAN THOMPSON STUFF Natural capital gets lots of air time because banks – in their ongoing quest to own the world – like to invest. Social capital? Not so much. They’re so tricky, humans, aren’t they – with their foibles and need to be treated humanely? Dan Thompson bangs the drum on behalf of all of us. He is expert at unlocking potential in people and places that are ignored. If he was in the private sector he’d have a knighthood! Lucy Siegle Eco writer, founder Observer Ethical Awards, broadcaster, The One Show DT is a visionary, an artist with a heartfelt sense of what matters in the real world, and the gumption to make it happen, not once but often. It’s unusual to spend time with Dan and not to come away inspired. John-Paul Flintoff Journalist and author of How To Change The World Dan’s art practice reflects social and cultural themes found by working with the local communities. The results are both democratic and critically challenging for audience and participants alike. Julia Riddiough Founder A Brooks Art abrooksart.com With writing by Lorna Dallas-Conte Kate Kneale Martin Parker Bernadette Russell SWELL PUBLI SHING Dan Thompson has played an extremely important part in developing community art and heritage projects across the UK in the last 20 years. This book is an amazing insight into Dan’s career and is a highly interesting read. Keith Brymer Jones Potter
DANTHOMPSONSTUFF
1. matter, material, articles, or activities of that are being referred to, indicated, or implied. 2. a person’s belongings, or baggage. 3. Dated - worthless or foolish ideas, speech, or writing; rubbish. “stu and nonsense” 4. things in which one is knowledgeable and experienced; one’s area of expertise. “he knows his stu” From: Middle English (denoting material for making clothes): shortening of Old French estoe ‘material, furniture’, estoer ‘equip, furnish’, from Greek stuphein ‘draw together’. noun: stu DANTHOMPSONSTUFF
2 / 3 WORKING IN BRIXTON VILLAGE PHOTO: THE CARAVAN GALLERY
The book comes in three parts: the first part gathers together a number of things Dan has made under different headings related to the ideas that underpin their making. The second part groups more of Dan’s stuff under different headings relating to the tactics he uses. Of course, this is a completely arbitrary cataloguing: most projects use a recipe that includes things from multiple headings in both sections. But it was either this, or completely chronological and, for an artist interested in the means of archiving and the creation of taxonomies, that was no fun. As a compromise, all Dan’s key works are included in a timeline in part three 19 multiple headings in both sections. But it was either this, or completely chronological and, for an artist interested in the means of archiving and the creation of taxonomies, that was no fun. As a compromise, all Dan’s key works are included in a timeline in part three 39 49
4 / 5 TALKING ABOUT TRACEY EMIN’S BED WITH ITV NEWS PHOTO: TRACEY THOMPSON
In the summer of 2011, something began which changed my life forever. A protest in Tottenham, North London, about the death at the hands of the police of Mark Duggan, organised by his friends and family, turned into a six day long rampage in which buildings burned and the streets were filled with angry, despairing and frustrated people. For me at the time; as frightening as it was to see London, and later Birmingham, Bristol and other towns and cities burn and break; the media response was the truly depressing thing. How quickly our press blamed the poor and the young (even though it turned out, it was pretty much every kind of person raiding the broken windows of Footlocker etc); how quickly the usual suspects churned out racist responses, and the cries for water cannon and army responses mounted. Rioters were given prison sentences for stealing a bottle of water. People were scared, of course they were, they were encouraged to be, it sold papers. The riots were seen as a mindless, entirely selfish, pointless rebellion (it still to my mind hasn’t been properly or compassionately analysed, but that’s another story…). Rebel Rebel: Dan Thompson and me by Bernadette Russell author, storyteller, artist and activist In the midst of images of buses on fire, young women leaping from the top floor of burning buildings, and weeping shop owners picking over the remains of their ruined family businesses, I scoured around for good news, for some hope; and I found it first in #riotcleanup. All I knew was that some FOREWORD
nice bloke had started a campaign on Twitter and asked people to get together and help clear up a street where they live. I literally cheered out loud when I saw this. It worked too, loads of people joined in and cleared up the streets. Dan Thompson, the nice bloke’s name was. I decided to get in touch, and that was the start of a beautiful friendship. Dan became part of my theatre show 366 Days Of Kindness, literally; because he is in it on film, and emotionally, because his attitude of ‘just do something small’ chimed with what I thought and felt. His courage and grit in doing so helped give me the confidence to do so too. After that summer, everything I did, wrote, every show I made, every post on social media, every time I had a conversation with a stranger on the bus, had kindness at the heart of it. Dan is and was a really important part of my story as an artist and a person. After this, we hung out in Deptford market (where I live); in Margate (where he lived), and I have seen him make funny, moving, profound and important work in the ten years we have known each other since that tumultuous summer. Everything he does touches people, connects them, makes them feel involved and included, introduces fun, mischief and creativity wherever it happens. In 2017, he kindly invited me and artist Rob Kennedy to be part of Troublemakers Festival in Swansea. The festival was a hit, and for me perfectly demonstrated Dan’s inimitable style: his ambition (‘let’s close 6 / 7
COSPLAYER AT GEEK FESTIVAL
the high street!’); generosity (making sure everyone got paid well and promptly, holding a space for us all, artists and participants alike); and all the different stuff he does; which wriggles deftly away from neat definition but includes theatre, poetry, visual art, installation, literature, live art, cabaret and gaming; was on display, brilliantly. This book is a really important record of Dan’s work and philosophy so far. I can’t wait to see what he gets up to next and hope to be part of it in some way, as audience or artist. There isn’t really much of a difference between those two. Dan shows us this: that each one of us are creative beings: beautiful, complicated and messy, and that that is what it means to be human. 8 / 9
Dan believes in the autonomy and agency of the individual, and that in coming together and having common experiences we are stronger. Dan is a writer, artist, designer, poet, curator, producer, festival programmer, and community organiser. Dan has spent over thirty years making work about people, with people, and for people. Dan’s work is open source, and can be copied, shared, adapted, and built on. It is given freely. Dan tells stories. INTRODUCTION
THIS BOOK 10 / 11 is not a retrospective. is not everything. is not a handbook. is not a work of fiction. is not a message in a bottle. is not a greatest hits album. is not a reunion tour. is not the end.
BELFAST CARLISLE PENRITH LEEDS ROCHDALE LIVERPOOL LINCOLN STOKE-ON-TRENT BOSTON SPALDING COVENTRY BEDFORD ENFIELD BRIXTON KILBURN COVENT GARDEN MARGATE SWANSEA WHITSTABLE SITTINGBOURNE TILBURY CANTERBURY FOLKESTONE RYE HORSHAM EASTBOURNE BRIGHTON SHOREHAM-BY-SEA STEYNING WORTHING LITTLEHAMPTON SOUTHAMPTON 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 q w e r t y u i o p a s d f g h j k l ; z x c 12 / 13 MAP ROTTERDAM STRESA - ITALY NSW - AUSTRALIA LOCHNAGAR - FRANCE “And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!” “Have you used it much?” I enquired. “It has never been spread out, yet,” said Mein Herr. “The farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.” Lewis Carroll, Sylvie & Bruno ~ ~ ~ ~ a f f f
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 q o e w 9 c l y ;z k j x h rt u s a p df i g
Organizing Art by Martin Parker Professor of Organization Studies School of Management University of Bristol For a while now, I’ve been puzzling about art, and work. To make art involves work, and all the activities that are required to make art happen are also, in other contexts, work too. Painting, chiselling, welding, thinking, organizing. And if we define music and dancing as co-ordinated and planned movements of bodies, then the difference between movements in a factory and movements in a theatre is a matter of context. Does singing on the job in the Amazon warehouse make the everyday into art? And don’t even get me started on knitting. Context then. It’s the spaces of theatre and gallery and pedestal that prime us to see something as art, such that we can end up staring admiringly at the incredible machine realism of the fire extinguisher. One of the features of these stages for art is that they are designed to conceal much of the labour of their production. They have a front stage for public display and a back stage for storage, a loading dock, dressing rooms, CCTV room, offices for marketing and accounting. The labour is hidden, accessible though secret doors that open onto passageways like the servants corridors in grand houses. Art is out front, work is the hidden secret. When I first met Dan Thompson, somewhere on the London Road in Stoke-on-Trent, we talked a bit about art and work. I remember Dan telling me that he thought his work was just a job like any other, and that meant that he needed to be paid properly for it. He said that in a slightly chippy way, flat cap pulled 14 / 15
down on his head, as if you wouldn’t ask a plasterer to work for nothing, mate. I took that to mean that art isn’t something just made by mysterious people with a sense of vocation and an intense stare, as well as a private income. As Dan’s work shows, it does not have to be something that conceals the labour that went into its production, and that is destined to find a home in an institution, whether classical portico or white cube. Whatever ‘community art’ is, Dan probably does it. He probably does ‘collaborative’ and ‘dialogic’ art too, and often appears to be an ‘artivist’, in the sense of exploring and dignifying ordinary spaces and lives. But what does he actually do? I have spent much of my life – sad geek that I am - thinking about the word ‘organization’, noun and verb. As an entity, organizations hold us from cradle to grave, sometimes gently, sometimes with violence. Much has been written about the state, corporation, family, council, railway, and army – all entities made from people and things that have effects on us. If we make the noun into a verb, we can also think about the processes that arrange our world, from bus queues to fishing competitions. We are organizing creatures, Homo Organizatus, decorating and making our worlds with people and things that spin and collide in patterns. Organizing creates organizations, which in turn create particular sorts of people and things, including art people and art things.
So I think that what Dan does is to organize people and things. Sometimes that involves getting things made – books, badges, umbrellas – but they are very often props for events, not ends in themselves. I have a pack of ‘It’s All About The Road’ badges, and they are not particularly interesting or beautiful, but they remind me of a few things. Of a bunch of us going on a walk in which Dan was noticing the shape of some 1950s street bollards, as well as a rather beautiful rambling rose at the back entrance to a massage parlour. I lived just up the road from there, and hadn’t noticed either of them, or lots of the other things that he drew our attention to. This ‘organizing art’ isn’t only about the event, though it does have the nature of an intervention. Sweeping up broken glass, doing something in an empty shop. Nothing spectacular is made or done, but the world is slightly changed. Mundane changes, and as easy to miss as the distinctive shape of a concrete bollard, or the well-kept plant pots and trellis at the back of the (delightfully named) ‘Head Office’ on Stoke’s London Road. Its hard to document organizing in a book like this. Organizing is a verb, and it produces effects, but capturing them as images or text is pretty difficult. The most common effect, in Dan’s work (remembering that it is work) is something about the way that he entangles ordinary people and ordinary things to make something strange. But not the sort of estrangement that inflates the artist into an impenetrable mystery, reflected in the eyes of an adoring audience. Rather, the most important effect is a tightening of social relations, the intensification of shared 16 / 17
knowledge, making places denser, deeper. That tired old word ‘community’ is endlessly and hopefully applied to places and people at different scales, but it is an effect, not something that can be called into being by naming it. The French philosopher JeanLuc Nancy talked about the idea of an ‘inoperative community’, in the sense that communities are not made deliberately, but are the unintended consequence of various sorts of action, from lending someone a paintbrush to cooking a cake together. A sense of community can not be produced deliberately, consciously, as if thicker collectivities could be manufactured by the actions of policy makers. Perhaps the sort of thing that Dan does, whatever it is, has more in common with lending someone a paintbrush than it does with using one himself. I don’t even know if he can use one.
18 / 19 The space between things iis important
WHY PART ONE “A man’s vision is his responsibility. If you have an idea, make it happen. Find the brothers and the sisters, find the resources, and do it. Your personal autonomy and power expose the shallowness of endless theorising and debate. Visions become real by being acted out, and once real serve as endless inspiration and free food for the public imagination.” Peter Coyote
CONVERSATION 20 / 21 Conversation can happen when we sit down for a cup of tea face-to-face, or during the hubbub of a communal meal. It can be inspired by walking alongside one another, or by the act of making together, or by the social objects we find in archives. Conversation can be complete in ten minutes, or take days or weeks or months. It can happen when we are in a space together, but can also happen in different ways: on Twitter, by Zoom, or in a series of exchanges of gifts. Conversation is when we share the wisdom of ancestors, tell stories of the places we live, and pass knowledge from one to another. Conversation is where we find what we have in common, and work out how to overcome the differences. “Everything starts with a conversation” revolutionary arts
100 poems about 100 places in England, that tell a history of the country. During this year-long project, Dan hosted public conversations with Towner Gallery (Eastbourne), Turner Contemporary (Margate), B arts and Letting In The Light (Stoke), The Tapestry Project (Rye), and Dreamland (Margate) and found stories about migration, industry, art, music, and everyday life. The collection of poems, published as a pamphlet, were the core of the project. Dan also created a series of screenprints (with Dawn Cole Studio), and an installation at Lombard Street Gallery, Margate as part of the Turner Prize 2019 offsite programme. Lines from the poems were printed on T shirts for Frequency Festival in Lincoln. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England. For more poetry see page 34. Your England 2018 to 2019 A series of conversations in shops, galleries and cafes about the state of the nation after the Referendum. With Turner Contemporary and Towner Gallery. Agora 2016-2017
22 / 23 ORGANIZING Form a posse, not a committee. Work with people who are better than you. The thing you are organizing is more important than the way you organize it. We don’t need more structures, we need more actions. Act like a gang - do the job, then scatter. Break the band up after making a perfect album. “You don’t have to be the same in order to share a space.” olafur eliasson For more Organizing Art see page 14.
Empty Shops Network 2008 to 2020 The Empty Shops Network is agile and adaptable, and it supports people occupying empty shops across the UK without becoming a top-heavy organisation. It brings together groups of people to try and test new ideas in practical ways, and it established a set of definitions of practice which have became universally adopted. It produced free resources, including a Toolkit and Licence To Occupy, which helped enable hundreds of projects. Working with a-n, it delivered tailored support and developed an insurance package for pop ups. The Empty Shops Network works directly with artists, makers, and community organisers - and at ministerial level with Labour and Conservative governments, with Arts Council England, councils across the UK, and with major national charities. As an advocate and champion for an emerging area of practice, it has featured on BBC Breakfast, BBC News, Radio 3 and Radio 4, and in most national newspapers including The Times, The Guardian and The Independent. “It inspired me to work with other creative people to start occupying empty spaces in the city. This led to an annual multiartist event (2016 to 2018) with massive impact. We’ve now been occupying a city centre gallery for two years and continue to push and promote street-facing work. Thank you - you inspired this!” Art Work Exeter
Art in galleries or theatres will only ever reach people who like art in galleries or theatres. Art in empty shops, on the streets, in churches, in people’s houses, in a Twitter feed, or in public spaces, makes it part of everyday life. These are common spaces, this is an egalitarian approach, and in it are the seeds of a cultural democracy. The Agora in the Greek city was the marketplace, the town hall, the site of protest and debate, and the arena for arts and culture. We don’t have to zone the city. SPACES 24 / 25 A pier, empty shops, the High Street in Swansea, a shopping precinct in South Kilburn, a brutalist carpark, beaches, a cafe, a houseboat, a gantry at the place the Windrush docked, windows, a twitten, a park bench, artists’ homes, St Matthew’s Church in Worthing and the Church of the Good Shepherd in Shoreham-by-Sea, a garden shed, Twitter, bookshops. “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” Jane Jacobs
Workshop 1A Shoreham by Sea 2010 to 2012 Workshop 24 South Kilburn 2010 to 2011 Workshop 34 Sittingbourne 2015 The Workshop series started when the Empty Shops Network went on a UK tour (Brixton, Shoreham, Carlisle, Coventry – January-March 2010), filling shops for a week at a time with a travelling circus of artists who worked with local people to explore the potential of their High Street or market. One space, in Shoreham by Sea, explored the idea of the Agora, and then became Workshop 1a. Projects followed in South Kilburn, Rochester, and Sittingbourne. The Workshop series took that idea of exploring the potential of a place and created an open, democratic and friendly way to do it. They were co-working spaces which started by saying ‘yes’ to local people. These were truly shared spaces: if local people said they wanted to craft together or start an indie film club or make a camera obscura or learn to use social media or to hang their work on the walls, that is what happened. In every case, local people were helped to achieve more than they could by themselves, with training and mentorship. In each place, a community of engaged and empowered people remained after the project left. Workshops have been run with churches, local councils, and regeneration projects. The Workshop series directly influenced The UpMarket in Worthing and the Retail Ready People programme, and influences Dan’s work with empty shops today. (With special thanks to Lloyd Davis, who helped the Workshops reach their full potential!)
FESTIVAL We have consciously discarded the old rituals, the shared moments of celebration, the common experiences that hold us together. So we must make new ones, that mark special moments, bring us together around shared ideas, help us find what we have in common. Festivals can be big or small. They can last an hour or a week. They can include two people, or two thousand, or more. They remember what went before, are moments of joy in the present moment, and are filled with future optimism. 26 / 27 They exist in time and space - that is, they mark a moment in the calendar and happen in a specific place. Their happening in that place is magical, and for the people who participated the place is never seen the same way afterwards. Festivals are temporary utopias.
A festival exploring the places social activism and art meet, curated with local people and taking over Swansea’s High Street for two days. Dan programmed the festival, and created new models of community commissioning. Working with local shops, galleries and businesses, he brought in guest artists including Mark Thomas, Stella Duffy, Charlie Tolfree, and Bernadette Russell. Dan was commissioned to programme the festival by Volcano Theatre. Troublemakers’ Festival 2017 “Troublemakers was the best project I’ve been part of in the last six years on the High Street, never felt such an energy and amazing atmosphere, even through the Welsh rain!” Jane Simpson, Gallery owner
Back and Fill 2020 A direct response to the coronavirus lockdown, Back and Fill festivals took place in seaside towns around the UK. Inspired by the ideas of health and wellbeing that first brought Georgians to the coast, the festival took place in October’s school holidays and created small moments of magic and togetherness. Devised by Dan and Kate Kneale, the locally-programmed festivals shared common principles and created a week full of moments of magic, wonder, hope, and optimism. 28 / 29
HERITAGE Nothing is new, nothing is unprecedented. Desire lines - the accidental paths created in the urban landscape - are at once our own selfish short-cut and an act of communal resistance. Somebody has always walked the path ahead of you. The answers we need can often be found in the past, and are embedded in the places where we live. Understanding our shared stories enlightens the future. It is easier to set out on a journey when you know that other people, from the same place as you and facing similar problems, have gone ahead. The objects in archives and museum collections become, when removed from their boxes or cases, social objects. They have not only their own intrinsic history, but help other people to tell their personal story. There is knowledge and experience and joy to be found by listening to the ancestors. 30 / 31
Print Works 2018-2020 and StArt The Press 2015 to 2018 Print Works explored the history of the print industry on the Isle of Thanet, taking inspiration from two former companies. It was funded by a grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and supported by the University of Kent’s Special Collections team. At the heart of the project were archives from Margate firms Thanet Press and Martell Press, which record the stories of the workers and the work they did. Print Works brought together separate Thanet Press archives held by Dan and Dawn Cole, and the Martell Press archives Dan had acquired through friendship with the firm’s founder. Dan and Dawn were joined by Lorna Dallas-Conte, who added an academic context to the work and interpreted the archives as objects to unlock collective memory. Print Works grew from an earlier project, StArt The Press, which was supported by a grant from Jameson Works. StArt The Press brought former print workers together, collecting their stories and using them to add context to the archives. The project involved working with a local dance school to create a response to the print industry, meetups of former staff, and an exhibition in Canterbury - all of which was ended abruptly by coronavirus. The Martell Press archive is kept in Dan’s studio, with access for researchers and designers.
London Road Residency 2014-2015 32 / 33 Dan spent a year as artist-in-residence on London Road in Stoke in this commission by Appetite and a local community group. Making interventions and collecting stories, at the end of 12 months he published a book, It’s All About The Road, a history of the city told through the stories from one road.
A collaboration with Keith Brymer Jones, in memory of all the workers at the now-closed Spode Works. Keith handmade over 1200 ceramic beakers, one for every person working in the factory at its peak. An installation during the British Ceramics Biennial in Stoke-on-Trent and at Newcastle Common, Newcastle-under-Lyme. Absent Tribe – British Ceramics Biennial 2019
POETRY 34 / 35 Poetry is one thing written down, and another when said out loud and shared with other people. Then, it becomes a magical incantation. The act of sharing poems is like breaking bread together: it is at once commonplace and everyday, and something rather wonderful. We all write poems, but only some of us use words. Poems about places, poems about people, poems about moments that pass like sunlight on the side of a house. Read about Your England on page 21.
Landing Place Landing Place was an irregular event held at Turner Contemporary. Every couple of months, ten poets would perform for ten minutes each, united by a single theme connected to the gallery’s programme. That theme inspired many poets to make new work to the brief. The event was co-organised and co-hosted with Tracey Thompson. At the closing of Landing Place, a small publication brought together some of the poems written especially for Landing Place. “Without these platforms, and the generosity of people like Dan and Tracey who put them on and the poets who contribute for free, we would all be much poorer. We need the willingness of arts organisations to include such events in their programmes, places where anyone who wants to can try things out in a space near to where they live, in places who support not only rich-and-famous international artists but also the talent right on their doorsteps. Things begin in these places, beautiful and important things. Art and friendship and ideas and new beginnings. Communities are strengthened and people given hope and entertainment. “It’s important just to be together and have fun isn’t it?” said the nice stranger sitting next to me. “Yes,” I said “yes it is”.” Bernadette Russell
Landing Place - DADA! by Kate Kneale Creative Director, HKD The gallery was packed. Crowds attracted by the sound of gongs and voices. The Landing Place performance which was held across multiple galleries in the Turner Contemporary did more than recreate historic performance pieces. 36 / 37 Held within the exhibition Arp: The Poetry of Forms, it broke down the respectful, formal viewing of the work on display. The noise added energy. It added danger and disruption. And in doing so it made the work alive and in that moment. The gallery fizzed with the contemporary relevance of the work. Dada events must have been wonderful to witness at the time, but in some ways to see this performance bursting through the cases and across time, creating joyous moments in 2018, was even more extraordinary. Performances of these poems are rare. To see them in this exhibition was an even rarer treat. Unforgettable!
JAY RECHSTEINER, TRACEY THOMPSON AND DAN AT DADA! AT TURNER CONTEMPORARY, MARGATE
38 / 39 Small is enough
HOW PART TWO Use the right tools, and (this bit takes time and practice) learn to use them well. While it is sometimes hard to see the continuity in this work (after all, what does a tiny blue velvet poppy have in common with creating a skatepark on a High Street? How do pop up shops connect with poetry about place?) Dan uses a set of tried and continually re-tested processes. These ensure that everything is considered, from the conception of the work, through the way people engage with it during making, to how the audience engage with it and the traces it will leave behind. The medium is the message.
We’re just looking after this stuff until we can hand it to our children. Luckily, it turns out they’re bright, informed, caring, and funny. They’re going to be better at it than us. YOUNG PEOPLE 40 / 41
Creative Work Dan worked with young people on the National Citizen Service’s summer programme, and ran sessions at the Quarterdeck youth club in Margate, to look at routes into careers in the creative industries. He developed a simple resource for careers advisors and youth workers to use with young people. Retail Ready People (Across England) – 2012 to 2013 Four pop ups, in four different places, each one created by thirty young people from the local area. Retail Ready People was devised by Dan for vInspired and The Retail Trust. It provided months of training and support to young people before they delivered four week projects in Brighton, Enfield, Leeds, and Rochdale.
WALKING & EXPLORATION Put one foot in front of the other. Repeat. At street level, experienced slowly, places give up their stories. “We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.” t s eliot 42 / 43
Orbit 2017 For Frequency Festival, Dan and Jon Adams went into orbit around Lincoln in their space shuttle. They explored the historic city from the Steep Hill Shuttle, a minibus which takes a short circular route round the city centre, to help shoppers up and down the infamous Steep Hill. It was both fun, but also a useful place to start conversations about the city’s stories. They completed a series of digital artworks including films and maps during their festival residency. Salt Town – Whitstable Satellite 2018 This 1.5 hour long walk explored a town’s rich industrial heritage – saltworks, copperas, tarmacadam, clay – steam engines, windfarms, seaforts and estuary. Dan led a guided walk accompanied by Liz Lake, who made a series of portable sculptures, and the walks ended with tea at Keith Brymer Jones’ Whitstable studio.
PLAY The built environment imposes certain rules on how we behave. In the spaces in between things, is a place where we can change the rules. I’m not mad - I just have a different set of rules. 44 / 45 “Play hard. Play fair. Nobody hurt.” steWart BranD
Tribe v Tribe 2015 TribevTribe was a game which used the town of Margate itself as the board. It celebrated Margate’s place as a home to youth culture, and layered that past over the present townscape. Players picked up a card to play, and it gave them a place in a tribe – Mods, Rockers, Hippies, Punks or Ravers. Players then moved through the town, and in and out of history, winning points by completing simple challenges, finding clues like reproductions of original gig posters, and recording their visits to venues including Dreamland, The Shell Grotto, Turner Contemporary and independent businesses. As they played they won points for their tribe, and each week, the dozen venues in the game were won or lost by a tribe. Over 100 people played and at the end of four weeks, the Mods won. One of the reproduction posters – for a gig by The Lower Third – was mistakenly reproduced in the 2016 David Bowie biography, Hero.
DIGITAL The physical world has weight, gravity, and momentum. The digital world has lightness, and speed. But things one-pixeldeep can, done well, not just reflect but also shape the real world. Dan has been experimenting with emerging technologies since 2000. With technologist James Fryer he built 46 / 47 artistsandmakers.com, a preFacebook platform which allowed users to create a profile, add their own content and images, and comment on things other people posted. It gathered over 3000 users. Now, with digital elements woven into every project, Dan is a post-digital artist. “Art, it is said, is not a mirror, but a hammer: it does not reflect, it shapes.” leon trotsKy, literature anD revolution
In August 2011, riots broke out after protests about the police killing of an unarmed man, Mark Duggan. During the following days, riots spread to other major cities and at least 100 homes were destroyed, five people were killed, and 14 people injured. When 68-year-old Richard Mannington Bowes tried to put out a fire in a rubbish bin, he was beaten to death by rioters. Trevor Ellis was shot, and Haroon Jahan, Shahzad Ali and Abdul Musavir had just left a Birmingham mosque when they were killed by a car driven into a crowd. Many small and independent shops were attacked, too. These included the barber shop of 89-year-old Aaron Biber, and a family-owned fancy dress shop in Clapham. After days of rioting and looting, Dan Tweeted; “Can we volunteer to help local shops tidy up, clean up in the morning? Can we help find #popupshop premises?”. #riotcleanup From that Tweet, an estimated 12,000 people volunteered in what became known as #riotcleanup, not just helping independent shops clean up but also raising funds for them (Aaron Biber received £25,000 in donations), and delivering food, clothes, and other supplies to those who had lost their homes. “The people who spontaneously came out to help tidy up, that’s anarchy. Anarchy’s not smashing windows and taking tellies, anarchy’s not setting light to branches of McDonalds. That don’t change nothing. Anarchy is people organising themselves for the common good in some way, without anyone coming round and giving them orders.” Billy Bragg
48 / 49 Find the edges