Documenting the Renovations at Theatr Clwyd

For the last session of the Stories Beneath the Surface, every participant gave a presentation on what we are all doing next and how the sessions have helped our practice. To begin, I wanted to give a brief explanation of my research as I came to the workshops to help my headspace for my research so I didn’t explore the same themes as other artists. Some explored the possibility of having an artistic invention at the Shugborough Estate and others explored the archives and oral histories.   I explained that my research involves Theatr Clwyd, their renovations and their public arts programme. The research themes were agreed by the university and theatre long before I applied and that it has been an interesting journey to find myself within those parameters and that was one of the reasons, I wanted to do these workshops. ​I described the theatre and where I am currently up to: Theatr Clwyd is currently undergoing a redevelopment programme costing over £35 million. It was ori...

Today, I attended a workshop produced by Theatr Clwyd and funded by them and Flintshire County Council Youth Services. The purpose is to get Year 9s, 13-14 year olds, to understand the importance of consent surrounding relationships and sex. The format is acted scenes and group work with the actors, facilitators and youth workers. The workshop follows a real story with all the personal details changed but the actions and consequences described are the same. The first scene introduces Rhys, who is trying to ask out Angharad; both are 15 years old. He talks to a friend about it. Their conversation is worrying; sending nudes via social media, how to talk to girls and how to get girls to have sex. They also watched some pornography. Because of Rhys’ approach, Angharad blocks him on Instagram. When the scene was finished the facilitators asked the participants to work in groups to discuss the toxic, illegality and misogyny within the interaction. The actors, facilitators and Youth Workers j...

We started the day at the V&A Wedgwood collection and the curator took us around some of the exhibitions. We were told how the Wedgwood company had a £134 million pension debt and how they had originally planned to sell off the artefacts in the museum to fund it. The Art Fund stepped in and managed to fundraise to buy the collection off Wedgwood and then gifted it to the V&A to run the museum.  The museum had recently received funding for a project to engage with the public about racism. Josiah Wedgwood was extremely outspoken on issues of slavery and was an abolitionist. In 1787, he created an anti-slavery medallion in jasperware for the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. This organisation campaigned against the atrocities committed by British enslavers who forcibly transported 3.8 million enslaved Africans to the Caribbean and the Americas. Thousands of the medallions were distributed for free; similar to protest badges of today. Wedgwood’s children continued t...

This was the first of our two away days as part of the workshop series. We visited the Shugborough Estate for the day with the intention of exploring how the National Trust has started to create exhibitions exploring the background of the building that they took over 5 years ago.  We first received an introduction to the building by National Trust staff having previously read documents Matt had sent about the estate:   Excerpts from National Trust Visitor Guide to Shugborough  Excerpts from Interim Report on the Connections between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery, 2020   The estate had been run by the local authority for 50 years and still had Lord Litchfield living there for some years. The building is separated into two for the public to discover the main building and then the Litchfield apartment.  The building was built with money from slavery, plantations and piracy. Not much of th...

The purpose of this session was for us to get to know the artists leading the workshops in a more in depth way. The artists involved are Paul Scott, Matt Smith and Jacqueline Bishop. Paul Scott Paul Scott went first. I have always been interested in his work and how he applies political satire and narrative into his pieces. He lives and works in rural Cumbria and that setting has been portrayed in some of his work. Paul described his life as a professional artist and gave great advice for anyone wanting to pursue being an artist as a career.  His pieces are brilliant; he uses playful intervention on ceramics we are all familiar with, usually blue and white willow pattern for example. He subtly subverts the domestic familiar patterns and images revealing complex histories and comments on contemporary society through his transfer ware and collaging. “Over the years, my artworks have commemorated and examined a range of issues, from the Foot and Mouth crisis to the impact of ene...