WHEN PART THREE This is an attempt to put a messy, unplanned career into some kind of order. Some things are missed, others overlap, and hindsight is a glorious thing. But it gives some idea of the busy-ness and shows how key themes have developed over time.
— With director Nick Young and administrator Alex Croft, Dan forms Rainbow Shakespeare • 1998 • • 1999 • — Photographic survey Maybridge ‘99, recording life on the council estate where Dan grew up at the turn of the millennium • 2000 • September — Dan walks in a straight line through Worthing town centre as Harry Palmer walks at the same time through Hull 50 / 51 — Pink-O-Rama, with Karin Paish and Harry Palmer on houseboat Yerba Buena — Riverbank, photographs of houseboat residents, Adur Festival — Joins 12 Miles West Studios, Field Row, Worthing l z
• 2001 • — 2001 Revolutionary Arts Group (RAG) is formed, with Tracey Thompson — RAG launch a graffiti project with young people, painting over 250 metres of murals with schools and youth clubs over the next two years — RAG’s first exhibition at Worthing Museum makes the front page of the Worthing Herald - who ask of work by Nathan Bean ‘Is this 3-minute video art?’ • 2002 • • 2003 • — artistsandmakers.com is launched, built with calypso singer James Fryer. A year before Facebook, it allows users to set up their own profile, post their own content, upload pictures to galleries, and comment on other people’s posts July — Worthing Art Trail expands into Horsham district, and it relaunches as the Artists and Makers Festival. July — Dan and Tracey Thompson launch the Worthing Art Trail, supported by Debbie Zoutewelle and Adrian Crick h
52 / 53 • 2004 • September — Dan is invited to make a provocation at Visualize The Future Conference in Margate, his first visit to the town July — The Artists and Makers Festival sees Bill Drummond launch his My Death project, and ends with the legendary Big Chill Festival at Worthing’s Barn Theatre August — B&E Gallery, Littlehampton • 2005 • July — Dan produces a play by a young graduate, Suzanne Heathcote, as part of the Artists and Makers Festival which features over 100 artists including Gimpo and Dave Gorman September — Pier Day, to celebrate Worthing winning Pier of the Year • 2006 • i x
• 2008 • Dan buys a six-month lease on a small struggling record shop in Worthing, and reopens it as Revolutionary Music July — The last Artists and Makers Festival includes an evening with broadcaster Andrew Collins, comic book artists including Glenn Fabry (2000AD) and John Higgins (Watchman), and the Caravan Gallery rolls into town. Dan hands the Worthing and Horsham open house trails to local artists August — Dan joins Twitter: ‘wondering whether any other artists are using twitter’ New website, www.danthompson.co.uk launched Empty Shops Network launched, to support organisations across the UK working in empty shops and with temporary spaces • 2009 • The Empty Shops Workbook published September — Made In Worthing, a festival dedicated to commissioning and making new work. Ivan Pope creates a giant inflatable sculpture on Worthing seafront September — Dan takes over Pier Day, and declares the landing stage at the sea end an independent nation state — Dan commissions Alice Angus, who makes 100 Views of Worthing Pier: Tall Tales, Ghosts and Imaginings. The work is printed on vinyl, and applied to the transparent windbreak screens on Worthing Pier. It is the first time the screen has been used this way
54 / 55 September — Pier Day becomes a vintage village fete, with visitors dressed from the 1930s-1950s. The sea end declares independence again November — Workshop 24 in South Kilburn • 2010 • August — While Dan spends a weekend at Adhocracy in Bethnal Green, a festival dedicated to encouraging people to take a DIY approach, rioting breaks out in London. It moves from a protest against the Police to widespread looting. Dan organises #riotcleanup, using Twitter to help people help independent shops hit by the riots, and the families who have lost their homes • 2011 • — ‘In Search of the Perfect Image’ - text for Is Britain Great? 3 by The Caravan Gallery 2011 October In his party conference speech, Prime Minister David Cameron praises Dan’s work for “showing the best of British leadership” • 2012 • — Pop Up People published, a report into how to encourage more creative use of empty shops. Supported by Arts Council England — Retail Ready People, with youth volunteering charity vInspired — Creatief Met Leegstand Festival, Rotterdam August — Volunteering platform #wewillgather launched at the House of Parliament, supported by MPs Stella Creasy, Nick Hurd, Tim Loughton, and Hazel Blears — Work with leadership teams at Unilever to develop ‘Activist Leadership’ model November — Pop Up Business For Dummies published y
— Renew Australia’s Creating Spaces conference, Newcastle, New South Wales September — Amy’s 30, pop up in Camden for the Amy Winehouse Foundation November — Social Media Meetup starts, Margate • 2013 • May — Dan appears at the launch of the Southbank Centre’s Festival of Love — Artist-in-residence on London Road in Stoke-on-Trent for a year — Bernadette Russell and Gareth Brierley tour 366 Days of Kindness, which starts with #riotcleanup and features Dan on film • 2014 • — What Would Jeremy Deller Do? Print, edition of 100 on neon pink poster paper — The Art Car Boot Fair, Folkestone, in a collaboration with Paul Hazelton and Tom Swift — Revolutionary Arts becomes Dan Thompson Studio — Dan tells London Road stories at Toynbee Studios, London and in Paine’s Plough’s Roundabout in Margate and Stoke • 2015 • 8 f
— Empire and Arcadia for Estuary Festival, exhibited at on the location at Tilbury Docks where the Windrush docked, and aboard lightship LV21 — A Wicked Pack of Cards, Arlington House, Margate — Dreamland Trilogy. Pleasure Gardens, Circus and Dreamland published, three books telling a history of Dreamland, Margate • 2016 • — Paying Artists: an artistled manifesto for a-n. Series of prints, and a UK-wide performance — From Wasteland To Wasteland, with the Lochnagar Crater Foundation. Exhibition in 2018 at Lombard Street Gallery, Margate • 2017 • — Agora, a series of conversations in Eastbourne, Margate, Stoke-on-Trent and Swansea — Pop Up Culture In Southampton published — Orbit, with Jon Adams, for Frequency Festival, Lincoln • 2018 • — Salt Town, with Liz Lake, for Whitstable Satellite — ‘New Rules for Social Media’, Rapid Response Unit, Liverpool — Your England 56 / 57 c 7 p 6 — Social Media storyteller for GEEK Festival
• 2019 • — Digital Poet-in-Residence for Frequency Festival, Lincoln — Absent Tribe. A collaboration with potter Keith Brymer Jones for the British Ceramic Biennial in Stoke — The Blue Poppy — Creative Work. Supported by The RSA — Design library project for Tate Exchange at Tate Modern — RIBA Regional Awards Panel - Lay Assessor 2020-21 — Webcam Poet-in-Residence for Turner Contemporary, Margate during coronavirus lockdown • 2020 • — Kongress with Flow Observatorium — Back and Fill, a series of seaside festivals around the UK, designed as a response to the Covid 19 lockdown
— Dan joins B arts in Stoke-on-Trent, looking at the company’s history and the ways it supports learning in both artists and other people the company works with — Creative writing workshops for veterans of the UK’s armed forces with Company of Makers — As Lead Artist, Dan helps Appetite create Newcastle Common, a new threeyear programme to occupy empty shops in Newcastle-under-Lyme • 2021 • — Continue as Lay Assessor for the delayed RIBA South East Awards. Building of the Year goes to the Malthouse, Canterbury - an old industrial building repurposed as a theatre — Launch Peace, a series of ongoing projects encouraging people to become active pacifists, with a residency in Newcastle-under-Lyme, exploring the life of Vera Brittain — The Showman’s Odyssey by Clive Holland, inspired by Your England poems, in Margate and (in 2022) in Stoke-on-Trent 58 / 59
— Publish Peace Gazetteer, guide to peace memorials, gardens, and sites across UK — Creative writing course with Company of Makers and Fighting With Pride, for veterans who suffered under the armed forces ban on LGBT members • 2022 • — Curate the exhibition Life, Clay and Everything - a retrospective of the work of potter Keith Brymer Jones — Hold Open Day at B arts building, No.72, in Stoke-on-Trent
Dan has lived in Shoreham-by-Sea, Worthing, Margate and Ramsgate, so the sea is a constant - and it is present in works like like Empire and Arcadia (made for Estuary Festival), the Made In Worthing festival, his work as Turner Contemporary’s poet-inresidence, and these works. THE SEA
Empire & Arcadia 2016 The story of two ships, the Empire Windrush and SS Arcadia, tell the wider story of immigration and emigration through the Thames Estuary. In a commission for Estuary Festival, Dan created two sets of giant signal flags, flown at Tilbury and Margate, and a reading room. The flags subsequently toured with The Libertines, as their backdrop. Seaside Towns Tour 2018 Margate’s Dreamland is a complex place - amusement park, festival site, performance venues, and - in some ways - the town’s village green. Dan was commissioned by the park’s owners to produce a report, showing Margate’s place in the ecology of South Coast seaside towns and identifying opportunities for Dreamland within that. He visited around 20 towns, from Bournemouth to Brighton and round to Southend, in just over a month. The final report was presented as evidence to a House of Lords committee investigating the seaside economy.
UNMADE PROJECTS A folk band tour folk clubs, and play folk arrangements of Pet Shop Boys songs All the windows in Arlington House, Margate are fitted with new roller blinds. Each floor has a different colour, so the towerblock becomes a rainbow Two musicians, piano and violin, play A Lark Ascending on the cliffs near Margate, where it was written on the day the First World War broke out A flotilla of model boats fitted with GPS trackers are set adrift in the Thames Estuary A white bell-tent, like the ones used by the British Army in the First World War, tours England’s festivals and village fetes as a space for conversations about peace and reconciliation An artist and a musician travel, and make a series of songs about small museums and overlooked heritage places IDEA No.1 IDEA No.2 IDEA No.3 IDEA No.4 IDEA No.5 IDEA No.6 62 / 63
Dan just starts work. He doesn’t wait, he just gets in there and gets on with it. He’s the most impatient patient person I know. by Lorna Dallas-Conte Artist, Educator and Creative Industries Business Adviser His patience is his ability to keep going into the thick of something and staying there for as long as feels right for him to be there. He moves on to do it all over again in a different setting, with another focus and with new groups of people. I see that as a form of patience with people and projects. As Dan gets stuck into stuff he offers new and ever changing opportunities for us to connect and to relook at our own social contributions and values. His actions invite everyone to step up, get stuck in and change. Dan’s art practice might be considered a valuable advanced form of improvisation that one has to take part in to really get. If we are lucky enough to come out the other side of a project with the extraordinary Dan Thompson, we will have experienced the qualities of working with some of the best bits of being a human, whilst at the same time be challenged by our limitations. But we need to get on with this, Dan would have made something and moved on by now. Dan’s work fits so well with Lewis Carroll and Alice, a theatrical and shifting work of many facets combined by a sense of urgency. In the wake of Dan’s ever mobile extraordinariness are left networks of people and POSTSCRIPT
shared experiences that take on lives of their own, each creating further chains of consequences and change. All these connections would be difficult to predict in advance or track and trace even using Dan’s social media expertise, but they prove the range and reach of the important value to us all of Dan’s impatient patience and his individual and particular art practice. Thank you Dan. 64 / 65
Peace is active: it is not merely the absence of war, but something we make together, and decide to maintain. That is to say, it takes commitment – it is not a neutral state. The United Kingdom has been at war continually since 1936, and as a consequence defines itself by war. So we have to fight for peace. Peace is a series of connected but independent works, made by Dan Thompson Studio and including other artists. It started in 2021 and will continue until the artist dies. The first work took place in Newcastle-under-Lyme, as part of Newcastle Common, and was inspired by writer and peace campaigner Vera Brittain who was born locally. Peace is, in part, inspired by the Lochnagar Crater on the Somme, and the work of its owner Richard Dunning. Peace
66 / 67 IF YOU LIKE THIS Totally Locally is the UK’s biggest grassroots high streets campaign. Something special, it’s more than a shop local campaign, it’s a philosophy. totallylocally.org Talking Birds are a group of artists who make gently provocative projects. Their work about people and places is thoughtful, playful, mischievous and transformative. talkingbirds.co.uk Playful Anywhere CIC is a Leeds-based social enterprise with a mission to catalyse creativity, inventiveness and playfulness, where we work, live and travel. playfulanywhere.fun B arts have a vision of a society where everyone has an equal chance to take part in the arts, and by taking part can make change for the better in themselves, their place and their communities. B-arts.org.uk Laura Kidd is a music producer, songwriter and digital polymath based in Bristol, UK, making music as Penfriend. penfriend.rocks Theatre Absolute is an award-winning theatre company, based in Coventry. They create performative work that is relevant, radical and disruptive. theatreabsolute.co.uk
— The RSA — Arts Council England and supported by — Towner Gallery — Turner Contemporary — Tapestry Project — B arts and Letting In The Light — Threshold Studios — Theatre Absolute — National Lottery Heritage Fund — Jameson Works — Heritage Lottery Fund — Arts Council England Creative Work Your England Print Works StArt The Press Dreamland Trilogy Pop Up People and Your England Projects supported by PUBLISHED BY SWELL Publishing, Ramsgate 2023 COVER PHOTO Jordan Mary DESIGN graemecampbell.design
68 Thanks To Family and Ancestors: Nigel Netta Sinead Tracey Edward & Eliza Thompson Elizabeth Stiles Linda Rush Dayna Richman Geoff Stiles Edith Thompson Jack Thompson Roland Wiggins Trevor Rush EJ Thompson
DANTHOMPSONSTUFF
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