Private Weather Diaries is a collection of weather observations from Burnham-on-Sea and across the Somerset Levels and Moors, created by twenty local Weather Diarists, over two weeks in April-May 2022.
The Exhibition and Reading Room is an invitation to turn our attention to the weather through the diaries of others.
The project takes inspiration from an archive of Weather Diaries in The National Meteorological Archive, in Exeter.
20 June- 4 July | Burnham-on-Sea Library
Mon/Tue/Thur/Fri 10-5
Wed/Sat 10-1
Sunday Closed
Weather Diarists: Marjorie Agnew, Steve Baggs, Jenny Blake, Rosemary Bryher, Joel Bunting, Michele Casling-Powell, Sally Flack, John Gammans, Alex Gundry, Rachel Gundry, Sarah Hill, Phil Hocking, Rosemary Lane, Rebecca Milton, Mark Noble, Kate Norton, Brian Page, June Passmore, Richard Roberts and Christine Yard.
Creative Team: Artist Steering Group ~ Sage Brice, Hilary Powell and Cherry Truluck, Producer ~ Theresa Bergne, Outside eye ~ Tom McDonagh, Installation Assistant ~ Emma Dibben, and Lead Artist ~ Alice Tatton Brown
This research is supported using public funding by The National Lottery through Arts Council England and Gane Trust, in partnership with Burnham-on-Sea Library, Somerset Art Works and National Meteorological Archive.
Inspired by Women's Liberation Movement and Feminist Archive South, this exhibition is part of a series of experiments in Collective Care.
Within the exhibition there is archival exhibits on WLM and non-violent direct action at Greenham Common, a Collective Survival Kit for our age, badge making and free tea/coffee.
'Feminist protest enables us to reassemble ourselves through the joint work of looking after ourselves and looking after each other.’ (Ahmed 2017)
Care has been one of the enduring legacies of the Women’s Liberation Movement, including how to value and create spaces, relationships and practices to take care of each other and oneself.
How we currently talk about wellbeing and mental health often heaps responsibility onto the individual, demanding that you make yourself better, or adjust to fit the system, or become more resilient to ‘challenges’ of an uncertain world. Our project rejects this neoliberal approach to self-care and seeks an alternative view, one that places the emphasis on interdependence rather than independence.
Credits: Core team: Maud Perrier, Alice Tatton Brown, Junko Yamashita | Fabricator and Co-designer: Tom McDonagh |
Peer Mentor: Chloe Whipple | Partners: Feminist Archive South | Funders: Brigstow Institute
Thank You to the Women of Women’s Liberation Movement.
Thank You also to Feminst Archive South and Hannah, Ian and Jamie in Special Collections at University of Bristol, D-M Withers, Tom McDonagh, Chloe Whipple, Interval Collective, Caraboo, Jamaica Street Studio’s, Colin and The Galleries Team, Sabrina Shirazi, Bristol Festival of Ideas, Jana Rumley, and Ceri, Julia and Gail from Brigstow Institute. And finally to all the women who loaned us objects for the Collective Survival Kit.
The Money is Kaleider’s hit showgame that has toured to 5 continents and played at Sydney Opera House, UK Houses of Parliament, Lagos City Hall, Lisbon City Hall, Victoria Parliament, City of London’s Guildhall, Tianjin’s Grand Theatre and many others.
Become a Player by donating as much as you can. Work with other Players to decide what to spend the group’s money on. You have 1 hour to come to a decision. If you don’t decide unanimously in the allotted time you relinquish your privilege to spend the money and the money rolls over to the next group of Players.
If you’re the quiet observing type you can become a Silent Witness and watch as the group of Players attempt to decide how to spend the money they’ve donated. And if you want to voice your opinion you can always become a Player and buy your way in.
Spend the money on whatever you want. Be as creative as you like.
Credits:
A Kaleider Production
Conceived and Directed by Seth Honnor
Collaborating Artist: Alice Tatton Brown
Production Manager: Jay Kerry
Current Performers: Olivia Winteringham, Gemma Paintin, Jessica MacDonald, Angie Bual, Kelly Marie Miller, Ria Hartley, Hanora Kamen.
Previous Performers: Alice Tatton-Brown, Frankie Snowdon, Peter Vanderford, Jonny Rowden, Emily Williams (also producer 2013 – 2016), and the late Paul Bull.
In everyone there sleeps a sense of life lived according to love. (P.Larkin)
Ariel is an intimate story told and retold in a library.
It’s the story of Ariel and John, and of what they left behind.
A re-working of a mystery and a love story.
Part audio walk, part installation, and part performance. Ariel is about what we create together, what remains of us, and of what our modern preoccupation with photography and documentation might reveal to us.
Ariel has taken place in Exeter Central Library | 19-26th October 2013, and Bristol Central Library | MayFest | 22-25 May 2014
"Moving and quietly contemplative, it celebrates a life-long romance while tugging mortality gently but insistently into the frame."
Exuent Magazine
Read full review here
"This is a show about love made with love. A re-discovery of and search for a powerful connection which once existed and is now reborn for us."
Total Theatre
Read full review here
Credits: Writer and performer: Alice Tatton Brown | Performer: Jonny Rowden | Sound Designer: Sam Halmarack | Dramaturg: Tim X Atack | Bookmaker: Guy Begbie | Project Manager: Rachael Burton | Website Designer: Rachael Clerke | Producers and Commissioners: Kaleider | Partners: Devon Libraries, Bristol Libraries, Mayfest | Thank you to: Interval, Martha King, Duncan Clark, Emily Williams, Seth Honnor and the T-Bs.
*Contracts of Care is a process for artists and collaborators when they begin a project. It is a signposted conversation which encourages the co-creators to ask difficult questions together. Sometimes this invitation for honesty makes for an uncomfortable conversation, this is not uncommon. Hopefully the co-operation required to create a COC will create trust in one another’s desire and capacity for something meaningful to happen. COC are particularly useful in projects where there is a perception that one party carries the power and the other party carries the risk. In choosing to co-write a Contract of Care there is an attempt to share power, risk and responsibility more thoughtfully.
*The original idea of ’Contracts of Care' was conceived in 2011 by Emily Williams who owns the IP. In 2015 a collaboration between Emily and Alice began to develop the idea. This version is the product of many conversations between Emily and Alice. Please credit them both if you want to share, adapt or use this Contract of Care for your own project.
Inspired by Bread and Puppets’ (USA) giant flags and aerial photography of icebergs breaking apart in Antartica. This flag (5m by 1.5m) was created for environmental protests and non violent direct actions. Beautiful and mesmeric to watch moving, our hope is that it signals toward far off places being dramatically effected by our current Climate Crisis.
Credits: Alice Tatton Brown and Tom McDonagh
Thank you to Eva Ullrich
1000 small orange figures lined the edges of pavements of Stokes Croft, Bristol, demonstrating the loss of people from the area, as community and art spaces in the neighbourhood faced threat of closure.
This public artwork (2018) was in response to the campaign of destructive ambiguity used by the landlords to quietly force out tenants. It was an attempt to make the exodus visible, to show the impact of accelerated redevelopment in the area.
What Went Wrong was part of a community wide response, known as Save Hamilton House, to reject plans to turn Hamilton House into flats. Despite two applications (local and national) planning consent was rejected. In 2018 eviction notices were issued to community interest company coexist who managed the building, and since 2019 the building has been managed by a private company, however it does continue to be used for some community classes and some artist studios. The saving was partial.
Credits: Isobel Tarr, Tom McDonagh, Alice Tatton Brown, Lara Luna Bartley | Thank You to Save Hamilton House
Alice met Hannah when Alice joined artist collective Interval in 2012, when they were based at 31a College Green, Bristol. Alice informally and then formally worked alongside Hannah as her dramaturg for her solo show’s Echo Beach (2014-15), With Force and Noise (2017-18) and Draw to Look (2017-18).
Please find a display
to compliment your evening
yours authentically
HO-ST
Radical generosity for performers and musicians in the greenroom at the Arnolfini (2017)
Credits: Julie McCalden, Alice Tatton Brown, Lucie Akerman Photo credit: Richard Broomhall
An intimate sci-fi opera that explores the real and fictional possibilities of terraforming.
In When There Is Only Us a performer roams the city, their words transmitted wirelessly back to the venue as they travel through the world. In dialogue with another performer, who remains in front of the audience, they describe their city as if it were a new world, while the sound of the city is also dragged back in to the venue. This is the sound of a city that the audience know, and yet they hear it described as a fictional cinematic environment on to which they can map their own memories.
Credits: by Circumstance; Musicians: Sarah Anderson and Duncan Speakman | Devisers and performers: Jessica MacDonald and Alice Tatton Brown
Between 2012-2014 The Parlour Showrooms (TPS) were two empty shops hired out to community groups and artists, for exhibitions and events. TPS held a space were an alternative economy was possible, making it feasible for marginal ideas/groups/individuals with limited budgets, to be seen in the centre of city, opposite the cathedral and county hall.
In one year; The Parlour Showrooms hosted 63 exhibitions, 110 events, 52 performances and welcomed 12,000 visitors. This supported 34 organisations, 457 inidividuals and contributed to 15 festivals.
Alongside this programme of year round weekly hires, Martha, Hannah and Alice produced performances, talks and events. One of the favourites was Wednesday Windows; weekly window performances, games and film, designed to cheer commuters on their way home during the depths of January:
The Lightbox Series: Wednesday Windows
During 2013 the team went onto produce a six month programme of performances and talks; In The City Series.
What made TPS possible/impossible?
31a College Green was owned by Bristol City Council (BCC), in 2011 after years of standing empty, the building, including the shops, had been opened up for commuity use by pioneer Ruth Essex/Arts Team BCC. This building was part of a city-wide scheme, to open up disused, problem properties in the city and lease them to artists and charities, known as Capacity Scheme (see This Made City for more info).
In 2012 Ruth Essex left BCC due to the Conservatives’ austerity cuts and handed over the lease to Martha King, Hannah Sullivan and Alice Tatton Brown, who were already resident upstairs, as part of artist collective Interval.
On a peppercorn rent they continued to hire the shops for low cost rent (£50 p/week small room & £90 p/week for big room), to community groups and artists, for exhibitions and events.
In 2013 the community applied for a Community Asset Transfer for the building, with city-wide support, however this was rejected by Bristol City Council. Later, in January 2014 Bristol City Council sold the whole building to property developers and the creative community were evicted. 31a College Green shops were turned into an ice cream parlour, and the spaces upstairs are now rented offices.
Interval, Stand + Stare, MAYK, Ausform moved to St Nicks Market, into The Exchange, under a similar peppercorn lease, which lasted until 2017. Interval is still there, now paying full rent to BCC.
Credits: Co- directors, producers, and managers: Martha King, Hannah Sullivan and Alice Tatton Brown | Supported by Bristol City Council Arts Team; Ruth Essex, Tana Holmes and Lerato Dunn.
Thank You to all the groups, individuals, charities that held exhibitions/events/performances/talks in TPS. Thank you to Ruth Essex, Tana Holmes, Interval, Stand+Stare, Paul Blakemore, Malcom Hamilton, and MAYK for continued support. This project was made possible because of a culture of generosity across the city.
During 2005-2014 twenty five empty buildings across Bristol, were opened up for creative and community use.
This Made City documents a city wide collaboration between artists, landlords and Bristol City Council and celebrates the collective efforts that made this movement possible.
This Made City comprised of two parts; originally an exhibition that took place in two empty shops (The Parlour Showrooms) on College Green in Bristol, over two very hot weeks in July 2013, and secondly an online archive of documentation. Like many others across the city, the curators sensed that the economic climate and cultural landscape was in the process of shifting. The online archive is an attempt to capture something before it disappeared- before the community spaces, the artist collectives and the ideas that held these places together, got broken up entirely and were partially forgotten.
Credits: This Made City Website Curators: Martha King and Alice Tatton Brown, supported by temporary use buildings across the city, and funded by Bristol City Council.
This Made City Exhibition was produced by Hannah Sullivan, Martha King and Alice Tatton Brown and supported by Bristol City Council, Arts Council England and IdeasTap.
Photography by Seb King and Dan Synertree. Exhibition print design by Fanny Wacklin Nilsson. Website built by Deckchair.
Thank You to Tana Holmes, Ruth Essex, Lerato Dunn, Seb King, Fanny Wacklin Nilsson, Dan Synertree, Paul Blakemore, Barrie Parsons, UWE, Deckchair, Interval, Stand + Stare and MAYK.
Re-imagine the city through live performance; a six month programme (July - Dec 2013) of performances and talks about the future of our city, produced by The Showroom Projects in collaboration with Residence, Knowle West Media Centre, Place, In Between Time, MAYK and You and Your Work. All events will take place at The Parlour Showrooms on a monthly basis.
1. Making In The City
In Collaboration with Residence, Knowle West Media Centre, PLaCE, In Between Time, MAYK, University of Bristol and You And Your Work. Funded by Arts Council England and IdeasTap.
