Goodbye to Susan after 38 years
Susan Clarke, who with Gill Gill and Hilary Hughes is one of the founders of Stoke-on-Trent based arts charity B arts, ended her time with the company in December 2023. Clarke is the current Artistic and Executive Director and is bowing out after almost 40 years.
Founded as Beavers in 1985, the first women led street theatre company in the UK, Gill, Hughes and Clarke expanded the company’s work from appearing as a range of eccentric walkabout characters at garden festivals and events to encompass close creative working with communities, initially in and around their base in North Staffordshire.
Their very first local co-created community celebration was in 1988 and marked the start of open cast mining in the Apedale valley and the 10th anniversary of Wood Lane Youth Club.
Their networks very quickly led to projects in Italy and in post communist Europe, starting a 20 year cycle of exchanges and international projects, involving an extended period of collaboration that crossed the political divides in Bosnia-Herzegovina, working with local youth organisations and displaced people. Currently B arts has live partnerships with companies in France, Moldova and Germany.
In the UK throughout 90’s and early 2000’s B arts went on to found programmes of creative work that touched the lives of thousands of people in Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme and north Staffordshire, including some of the most marginalised (refugees, asylum seekers, people living in poverty and on the fringes of the city).
From lantern processions, books, carnival, theatre shows, music events, art in empty shops and civic buildings B arts have been a force for change and arts and community led regeneration for the last 38 years, making work where there was no access to the arts, opening up new spaces to make creative celebratory projects with people and training and mentoring successive generations of creatives.
Clarke led on the cultural programming in preparation for Stoke’s bid to be UK City of Culture 2021 and it is from this root that her new role arises as the Executive Director for Stoke Creates, a new cultural compact for Stoke and north Staffordshire.
In 2014 B arts moved to 72 Hartshill Road, a former industrial space, opened Bread in Common, a bakery and waste food café and opened the building as a production and performance/ exhibition space. The company operates from No.72 and continues to run a packed diary of successful programmes, projects and training.
Susan Clarke says, “I am honoured to have had my life with B arts. I have collaborated with so many notable people over that time; artists, partners, co-creators, too many to mention. I’ve worked in some extraordinary places and in extreme situations, here and abroad and I will miss the excitement of loading a van and setting out for the next adventure.
However, the time has come to leave while I still have a passion for arts-led change in Stoke and north Staffordshire, and the energy to pursue some of my own creative projects.
B arts is ready for new leadership and I need to step aside and make way for them.”
