Art City Stoke 2021

Dan Thompson talks about the B arts Art City programme and the history of B arts.

Author - Dan Thompson, Thursday 18 March 2021

In 2020, in that brief pause between lockdowns when the sun was out and life felt a little like it used to, Susan Clarke from B arts stopped off in Margate for a cup of tea by the Bus Cafe on the prom.

The year before, I had hosted a conference for B arts, as part of their Art City programme.

I have been working with empty spaces for more than twenty years, and focusing on empty shops and High Streets since the recession started in 2008. B arts have been working since the mid-1980s when they formed around Stoke-on-Trent’s Garden Festival - so regeneration has always been part of their conversation.

Six years ago, when I was working as artist-in-residence on Stoke’s London Road for Appetite, B arts launched Art City and took over a Gormanghast-ish maze of ex-industrial buildings, workshops, and - facing the street - empty shops. Since then, we have had a number of interesting conversations, and found the common ground between B arts and Dan Thompson Studio.

So, sitting in the sun at the end of the Thames Estuary, Susan asked - would I be interested in working with them for a year, to look at Art City, to see what they could learn from it and to consider how that might shape a future programme?

I am now a few months into that work, working as Learning Lead supported by funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. I have spent time talking to current Associate Artists and to people from the company’s history. I have helped evaluate the company’s lockdown commissions for local artists, and delivered a session to support Associate Artists as they prepare bids to Arts Council England’s Developing Your Creative Practice fund.

From the outside, B arts is a curious and complicated thing. It is old, but always refreshed by new people. It is broadly non-hierarchical, but couldn’t exist without the leadership of Hillary Hughes and Susan Clarke. It is international, but very local. It makes very public things, and very simple things (a bakery, making bread!), but many people say they don’t quite understand what it does. It is absolutely punk, has radical and queer roots, and a DIY spirit runs through it, but it is also part of the establishment (the only criticism I heard of B arts was a frustration that it sometimes doesn’t behave as part of the establishment should: it doesn’t create structures, doesn’t play by the rules!).

From all the conversations, one thing is clear and consistent: with B arts, people are doing things they never knew they could.

B arts is wonderful at nurturing people, holding them, and giving them the knowledge and confidence to do things they didn’t know they could do and make things they had no idea how to make. And these people then become B arts for the public, going out and making moments of magic and wonder and spectacle that are like fireworks thrown into everyday life. When they’re done, they stay, and bring new friends to B arts, so the cycle starts again - or they go off and make their own mayhem elsewhere. There are lots of ex-B arts people making mischief, from Manchester to Margate.

Lots of B arts associates have a similar path: they arrive (as graduates, or as friends of graduates, from local universities) not knowing what B arts is or does. They start by doing one small thing, then do another - often something unexpected, nudged into a new role by somebody (Susan, usually). They move from friend to volunteer to artist or producer, without really noticing that they have been on a journey. Many people used the exact same phrase: they ‘go with the flow’.

So now, we’re going to take the learning a little deeper, and see if we can be better in the first place at explaining what B arts does. We’re going to write a history of the organisation, which isn’t just a history. It will be a handbook for people who want to follow a similar path. It will act as a reminder of what B arts does and why that’s special. It will weave threads from forty years and an international practice together, and place B arts in a history of radical theatre that takes in Welfare State International, Ken Campbell, The Zap, the Creative People and Places programme, London 2012’s opening ceremony, and the 1960s Arts Lab movement.

We’re also going to find ways to treasure the informal, sometimes meandering progression people make with B arts but maybe put a path under it, so that we can help more people to follow it. We’re going to look at not just what’s practical now - helping people complete funding applications, say - but also what the future might need. What does a Basic Income for artists look like, and how does an organisation like B arts create not just fair work, but whole new models to support creativity?

We’re going to look at the B arts building - or rather, the world that has been created inside it - which people say is incredibly important. Everyone spoke about it - how it makes networking happen, how it is safe and comfortable, how it is a genuinely open door, how there is always a corner for a personal project.

The building gives weight and solidity to ideas (and to an organisation) that could otherwise be ephemeral. The building gives people space to think and dream, but is also very grounded. It is a workshop, in the old sense of the word, a manufactory for the arts.

It acts as a common place, somewhere for people to come together, and no other Stoke arts organisation does this, so it puts B arts at the centre of things. Should we name the building, so that it becomes a more solid thing? If we stand outside it - how can we invite more people in? Where’s the front door? Can we make sure every space is useful and we’re making the most from the building? And can we imagine how the building works in 10 years, or 20?

But perhaps most importantly, we are going to look at B arts through a different lens. In recognition of the work B arts has always done to support, nurture, train, and invest in people, we are going to see what happens if we think of B arts as a learning organisation as much as an arts organisation.

And we’re going to do all this through conversation, with Associate Artists and old friends, and do it all in the open, with more public conversations delivered via Zoom in the coming months.

If you’re interested in B arts, or if you’re involved now or you’ve been involved at some point in the past, or if you are interested in art, theatre, fire, lanterns, music, public spaces, baking bread, or any of the hundred other things B arts have done - then please, sit down, break bread, and join the conversation.  

Dan Thompson

We would love to hear from you! What are your B arts memories?
Does anybody remember meeting us at the Garden Festival?

You can get in touch by emailing info@b-arts.org.uk; or through our social media.