AMY KINGSMILL: A podcast by SPILL Festival

A podcast series by SPILL Festival

Amy came to Ipswich to tell us about her performance and research project, Light Source, following a showing of the piece at Colchester Arts Centre and a symposium at the British Library. Light Source highlighted the lost histories of persecuted people, primarily women, and gave voice to the innocents killed in witch trials.

Amy and Robin covered a huge variety of topics including the history of witch trials in East Anglia and beyond, the possibility of reinventing and reclaiming the witch, contemporary instances of persecution, interpretations of eccentricity and the search for justice for those executed.

For more information on Amy’s work, you can visit her website here. A website dedicated to her Light Source project can be found here.

Credits
Presented and edited by Robin Deacon
Music composed by Loula Yorke
Light Source is hosted and curated by Amy Kingsmill

MARCUS HARRIS-NOBLE: A podcast by SPILL Festival

A podcast series by SPILL Festival

For this episode, Robin talks to Marcus Harris Noble, Creative Producer and DJ. Marcus was part of our 2024 Think Tank Live programme, presenting a participatory workshop entitled ‘The Deep Listening Toolkit’, which was designed to shift our habits and perceptions around the act of listening to music.

Topics covered in this podcast include the devaluation of music as in monetary and cultural terms, the possibility (or not) random discovery in the algorithmic age, how apps like Shazam have changed how recommendations are made for new music, the pleasures of listening to crackly vinyl records and Marcus’s search for every version of the classic Jimmy Webb song, Wichita Lineman.

Credits
Presented and edited by Robin Deacon
Music composed by Loula Yorke
The Deep Listening Toolkit was devised and presented by Marcus Harris-Noble

LOUISE ORWIN: A podcast by SPILL Festival

A podcast series by SPILL Festival

This podcast series features conversations with artists and makers of all kinds that SPILL has presented, worked with or admired from a distance. 

In this, our first episode of the series, Robin is in conversation with London based performance artist Louise Orwin. Louise visited our venue the SPILL Think Tank earlier this year, to present a work in progress screening of a documentary film based on her experiences of touring her live performance, FameHungry. Louise has described FameHungry as a ‘helter skelter nosedive into the TikTok universe’, asking how performance art can compete in the digital age.

Topics covered include the attention economy, social media in comparison to film and television, what it’s like to be mentored by somebody younger than you, fame on TikTok, censorship on TikTok, and how to avoid dystopian thinking about our present cultural moment.

Credits

Presented and edited by Robin Deacon. 

Music composed by Loula Yorke.

OLDER (SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE POSH CLUB)

Phyllis and Robert Deacon in 1967 and in 2023 (Visiting Christchurch Park, Ipswich)

One of the reasons I came back to live in the UK after ten years abroad was to be closer to my parents. Both are in their 80s now, and whilst they are active and in good health, I have a distinct memory of how the pandemic led me to question my assumptions of being able to hop on a plane to go and see them, whether in an emergency or otherwise. 

In the 2019 book Elderhood by American clinician Louise Aronson, it is pointed out that how we define ‘old’ (in Western cultures) has shifted according to extensions of life expectancy. According to Aronson, for more than five thousand years, ‘old’ has been defined as being between the ages of sixty and seventy. But with humans now living longer than ever before, many people alive today will be elders for forty years or more. Yet despite the fact that many of us will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, old age still remains ‘…a condition to be dreaded, disparaged, neglected, and denied.’

I have similarly come to think of age as somewhat taboo in terms of identity, especially for artists. If you are a regular reader of these posts, you might remember a previous one where I discussed the idea of the ‘submerging artist’, the fate of the mid-career artist who is no longer the young, new thing.

As a teacher of performance in universities and art schools, I remember a period in the mid 2000s where I would share with my students a text by Yvonne Rainer, the seminal American experimental dance practitioner and filmmaker. At the crux of the essay were multiple  descriptions of ballet dancers on stage at an age where the physical capacity for these exertions begins to elude them. Yvonne Rainer asks us to consider when it might be time to just stop:

‘So when is it time to say “farewell to dance?” When and how must we begin to think of ways to avoid becoming objects of pity or caricature as we attempt to engage movement that is ever — and obviously — more difficult?’ 

Despite my finding this text both beautiful and fascinating, it never seemed to land with the students. In conversation, the students (mostly in their early twenties) would often say they could not conceive of being old in the way that Yvonne Rainer described. In many cases, they would talk about ageing as it relates to career, and what the ideal age would be to have ‘made it’ as an artist; i.e. before you got ‘too old’. I asked one of them to define what old was to them, and whether I (as somebody in their forties at that time), would be described in that way. The answer to the latter question was always a resounding yes. 

Fast forward to June 2024, and I am standing in the Grand Hall of Ipswich Town Hall, watching what I would consider to be old (or rather, older) people dancing. This is The Posh Club, an afternoon tea event for patrons over 60, or as the flyer describes the suggested clientele, ‘…swanky senior citizens, elegant elders and glamorous golden girls and geezers.’ 

Posh Club, Ipswich Town Hall, 4 June 2024 (Photograph by Alexander Ward)

Programmed by SPILL and attended by 220 guests, the event had sold out many days in advance, primarily due to the incredible advocacy of Julie Stokes, CEO of ActivLives, a charity working across Ipswich and Suffolk to keep older people active and connected to their local communities.

The Posh Club is the brainchild of Duckie, a London-based artist collective and, in their own words, ‘a group of veteran LGBTQ club runners that emerged out of the wasteland of south London’s Vauxhall a quarter of a century ago.’ Posh Clubs happen all across the South East, with regular events in Hackney, Brighton and Crawley.

Simon Casson from Duckie (Photograph by Robin Deacon)

Flyering for Posh Club on the Cornhill, Ipswich (Photograph by Robin Deacon)

Posh Club, Ipswich Town Hall, 4 June 2024 (Photograph by Alexander Ward)

When Duckie’s Director Simon Casson contacted me last year to see if there might be interest in SPILL working with them to bring The Posh Club to Ipswich for the first time, my mind went back to my first experiences with Duckie – probably in the early 2000s in London, with their legendary night club events at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in London. 

As a much younger artist (I must have been in my mid-twenties), I performed at one of these Duckie events. Despite my developing reputation at that time for my rather strange little performances, I was a shy young man; straight, in all senses of the word. My experience that night was both terrifying and exhilarating. I did a 5-minute turn on a tiny stage to a crowd who were as rowdy and boozy as I had ever experienced as an artist still finding my feet and my voice. 

For the performance, I had (for some reason) come dressed as a chef, and used a saw to chop off fake parts of my body made from papier mache and filled with tomato ketchup and strawberry jelly for blood and guts. I remember cooking these dismembered body parts on a portable hob, the pink and red goo spilling all over the place. The audience were a noisy bunch, as they reacted with horror and amusement to the bloody mess I was making. My gestures became increasingly exaggerated and frantic to keep their attention, as well as hecklers at bay; a clear and present danger at Duckie it would seem.

It was funny having these memories bubbling up in response to Simon's proposal to SPILL. This expansion of my perception of Duckie as hip London nightclub impresarios to them also providing experiences specifically designed for older people  - especially those who may be lonely or isolated - has always fascinated me. How can we make sense of the contrast between tea and cake in the afternoon in Ipswich relative to the edgy London club nights they still do, where a young, queer crowd parties and dances into the wee small hours. 

In a public talk at our Think Tank venue held in the run up to the Posh Club event, both Simon from Duckie and Julie From ActivLives presented the ethos and histories of their organisations. It was only through witnessing the following conversation that I began to see more clearly affinities between them that went beyond questions of age or ageing. Simon and Julie spoke about the importance of breaking bread for the kind of social events organised by both Duckie (afternoon tea) and ActivLives (lunch clubs). Both talked about service in this regard. 

Posh Club, Ipswich Town Hall, 4 June 2024 (Photograph by Alexander Ward)

ActivLives state that their remit is to support not just those of a particular age (55 or over), but also those who live in ‘hard pressed areas in Ipswich and across Suffolk’, whereas Simon’s perspectives on the importance of class (or, as he put it, ‘the C-word’), also position The Posh Club in a wider conversation about tackling societal disadvantage. Something that Simon said in a BBC Radio Suffolk interview stayed with me: that British people don’t always look after the elderly well. 

If you have been following American politics in recent weeks, questions of ageing remain current. Watching the dancing at Ipswich Town Hall continue into the late afternoon, I was conscious of the fact that in less than 10 years, I myself will be eligible for entry to The Posh Club as a punter. Something to look forward to of course, but combined with my recent acquisition of an over 50’s railcard, such a realisation makes me even more aware of the accelerated passage of time that comes with ageing. These days, a decade can fly by. 

YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'VE GOT 'TIL IT'S GONE

The mayor's car outside the Ipswich Caribbean Association's International Community Centre, c. 1980.

Photo courtesy of Suffolk Archives

The title of this entry is of course a reference to the Joni Mitchell song that so articulately describes what it means to lose something of value. As you will see, the reference to a parking lot in that same song is also pertinent to what follows.

Early March saw SPILL Festival share a call out for a new artist commission, having been awarded funding in the form of a Historic England ‘Everyday Heritage’ grant: https://www.spillfestival.com/artist-callouts

We are seeking artists to create new works and experiences inspired by the history of the Ipswich Caribbean Association building, which formerly stood at 15 Woodbridge Road. I have already written in these notebook entries about how participation and community engagement is new territory for me as an Artistic Director; this project is a further step into this kind of artistic practice.

As I said in an interview with the East Anglian Daily Times, ‘The story of the Ipswich Caribbean Association building is fascinating – of music, food, conversation and people coming together across cultures. It is also a story of loss, with the Woodbridge Road building having been demolished in 2012. With our funding from Historic England, SPILL Festival will commission artists to connect with local communities to activate memories of this space, and also think about their needs for the future. I hope going forward that SPILL Festival can build on this kind of approach, where the input of Ipswich communities through their stories and interests can help us shape what we do.’

The origins of this project are interesting. In early 2023, we did a public call out to get some input for a festival project with French artist Olivier Grossetête who was renowned for building monumental architectural constructions from cardboard boxes. What building, we asked, would the people of Ipswich like to see built as part of this project? 

A lot had to be factored in when making this decision, including the structural feasibility as a large-scale object constructed from cardboard boxes (the many suggestions of the Orwell Bridge were apparently a no go for this reason) and the artist’s own interests in the building itself. Ultimately, we landed on a reconstruction of Ipswich’s Wolsey Gate and an imagined depiction of the ultimately unrealised college that was originally to be built around it, but we received a significant number of votes for the Ipswich Caribbean Association building as one they would like to see reconstructed.

In the end, a fun (and sometimes hair rising) time was had by all, building, demolishing and disposing of this 16-metre-tall construction. However, the interest many had expressed in the ICA building stayed with me, planting the seed for a project that is now coming to fruition.

We began our new year with a first meeting of our steering group (who will be leading on the artist selection process) and I soon came to realise what a complex story this is. These initial conversations made it clear that the communities who originally used the ICA still felt its absence as a wound.

The possible sensitivity at play is making me think about my own relationship with the histories and experiences that may come to the fore in this project. My family heritage has its roots in the Caribbean; my mother is a Trinidadian who came to work for the NHS in the 1960s. In 2018, I made a spoken word performance where this part of her biography was explored. My mother was also a musician, a member of La Petite Musicale, a choral group that performed the traditional folk music of Trinidad and its sister island Tobago. In my performance, I recounted my experiences of trying to find copies of La Petite Musicale records with my mother as a member, as well as sharing mum’s memories of making these recordings before emigrating to the UK.

(My mum, by the way, is standing in the second row, fifth from the right.)

In the performance, I tried to find some connection between these three dates, and three occurrences happening over three years:

• Trinidadian Independence in 1962

• The recording of this record in 1963

• The departure of my mother for the United Kingdom in 1964

So there was the fact of a country becoming independent (and the idea of this being this new dawn for the country), alongside the fact of someone leaving that country for this other place - the place that they had just become independent from. In our conversations, we never quite got to the bottom of all this, but I remember my fascination with my mother telling me how, as a younger woman, she would describe the UK as ‘the mother country’. However, I recognise this alone does not give me an inherent understanding of the Ipswich Caribbean Association, and the specificity of its stories in the context of this town and Suffolk. 

Fast forward to February 2024, and I am sitting in The Hold, the home of Suffolk Archives in Ipswich. I am watching a DVD containing a series of interviews generated by the Ipswich Caribbean Experience (ICE), a 2005 project that recorded and preserved the experiences of those who migrated from the Caribbean to Ipswich during the 1950s and 60s. It is interesting to hear that same phrase my mum would use - ‘the mother country’ - being used by interviewees from other Caribbean Islands: Jamaica, Barbados, St Kitts, Nevis. As I hear the different cadences in speech, and differing descriptions of cuisine from differing islands, I am reminded of the need to keep thinking of that word ‘community’ as a plural.

Turning my attention to the fragments of papers, leaflets and documents in The Hold’s archives, I am instinctively drawn to the minutiae. I find myself thumbing through thin sheathes of typewritten paper that mark out a more mundane history of the Ipswich Caribbean Association and its home on Woodbridge Road: agendas from meetings, confirmations of attendance, notes of apology, memos about building maintenance and toilet cleaning rotas.

The evolution of the differing logos for the ICA over the years of its existence were of particular interest:

Images courtesy of Suffolk Archives

A member of our steering group spoke of a fleeting memory of the blue martial arts outfits worn by kids walking up Woodbridge Road to the karate classes the ICA would hold. Other conversations I have had since our project was announced suggest other points of entry for artists who may be interested in this commission: the role of food and lunch clubs in forming community for elders, the importance of the ICA as a venue for music, whether sound systems or drum and bass, and of course, dominoes. I am told dominoes are really key to the history of the ICA. Of course, these need not be competing narratives, but hopefully represent starting points for all kinds of responses to the history of this space and the people that used it.

It important to place the Ipswich Caribbean Society project in a wider context of other projects funded by Historic England which focus on working class heritage all over the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/feb/21/hidden-stories-historic-england-funds-56-projects-on-working-class-heritage?CMP=twt_a-culture_b-gdnculture 

Images courtesy of Suffolk Archives

I am also excited by the possibility that this project may unearth the unseen and unheard. For example, I hear rumours of battered old boxes of photographs or memorabilia from the ICA in people’s lofts, unseen for many years. In my experience, some of the best archives are domestic rather than institutional. 

We look forward to hearing from artists and creative practitioners who may be interested in this exciting opportunity. Our deadline is 2nd April 2024 and there’s more information elsewhere on this site. If you would like to have a preliminary conversation about your proposal before applying, feel free to write to me at robin@spillfestival.com. 

You might even want to visit the former site of the Ipswich Caribbean Association on Woodbridge Road to help imagine what might be possible. At the moment, it is a car park.

Having spent nearly two years living around the corner from here, it does strike me as funny how one can walk past such an unremarkable location nearly every day, and not realise its remarkable history or significance.

Thanks to Emily Shepperson and the staff at The Hold, Historic England and our steering group for their guidance on this project.