Council Estate Performance
May 29, 11.30am-1pm
Peckham Liberal Club
24 Elm Grove, London SE15 5DE
Speakers: Charlotte Bell, Katie Beswick, Helena Thompson
This panel discussion brings together practitioner and academic viewpoints on council estate performance and art happening in site-specific contexts. Panel members will present a range of examples of site-specific performance practice happening on and about estates, before discussing how and why artists might choose to make these located works. We will consider the potential performance practice has to challenge dominant, stigmatising depictions of estates and their residents, and ask whether art is always co-opted into (re)-presenting dominant political and discourses in order to secure funding. There will be a Q&A session where audience members will have the opportunity to discuss issues and ideas raised during the session with panel members.
CHARLOTTE BELL / Writer and Academic
Charlotte Bell completed her PhD at Queen Mary University of London where her research focused on site-specific art and performance in/about urban social housing estates and their relations to the cultural economy. In 2013 she won the TaPRA PG Essay Prize for her essay on The Royal Court Theatre Local Peckham and Peckham Space Gallery; her work has also been published in Wasafiri, Contemporary Theatre Review and New Theatre Quarterly and has contributed to Kim Solga's blog The Activist Classroom. In 2014 she joined the Teach First programme as an English and Media Studies teacher at a state comprehensive school in southwest Birmingham. In 2015 she chaired a series of articles for Contemporary Theatre Review Interventions to coincide with a special issue On Editing.
qmul.academia.edu/CharlotteBell
KATIE BESWICK / Writer, Applied Theatre Facilitator, and Academic
Katie Beswick is an academic, writer and applied theatre facilitator. Her PhD, awarded by the University of Leeds, explored how the council estate is represented across a variety of performance practices. She has published widely on her research in academic books and journals, and writes about art and culture online – her writing has featured on publications including The Huffington Post, The Culture Vulture and Instyle.co.uk. She has facilitated projects on estates across London with companies including SPLASH arts and Phakama. She works as a lecturer and Queen Mary University of London and is currently writing a monograph called The Council Estate in Performance.
sed.qmul.ac.uk/staff/beswickk.html
HELENA THOMPSON / Artistic Director: SPID Theatre Company
Helena Thompson founded SPID (Specially Produced Innovatively Directed) in order to reinvent community theatre for council estates and non-traditional spaces. The charity is based in the historic modernist council estate of Kensal House where it runs a wraparound youth program for disadvantaged teenagers. SPID’s work does not take on place on stage, but brings audiences together using immersive, participatory, promenade or site specific techniques. It creates youth shows, professional shows, youth films and tours. Prizes include Time Out Critic’s Choice, Fringe Report’s Best Outreach Company and ITV First Light Best Film Award.