Category: Events

The Ale House in Stroud, Stroud’s Workhouse and Pauper Burials

The first meeting of the Stroud Radical Reading Group took place in the aptly named Ale House in Stroud, hard by Union Street. Union Streets very often came into named existence after the passing of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act – parishes were grouped into Unions, with a central workhouse: NO OUTDOOR RELIEF. Individual parishes lost their workhouses with their possibly more lenient atmosphere andallowance of outdoor relief. Henceforth, conditions inside the workhouse were to be made worse than if you had the worst paid job outside (called ‘lesser eligibility’).
In effect, POVERTY WAS CRIMINALISED.
How excellent then, to sit near the plaque in the Ale House, with its Mr. Bumble praise:

Stroud Ale House Plaque Image

IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF THE BENEVOLENCE INTEGRITY AND PERSEVERANCE WITH WHICH THE LATE EDWARD PALLING CARUTHERS ASSISTED FOR THE LAST FIVE YEARS OF HIS LIFE AS CHAIRMAN OF THIS BOARD IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE AFFAIRS OF THE POOR. THIS TABLET IS INSCRIBED BY THE UNANIMOUS WISH OF THE GUARDIANS NOVR 1842.

Jump down to the end of this piece for a piece on Stroud Workhouse, but for now, here’s a few lines on the meeting on Wednesday January 13th 2016: ‘This month we will be reading ‘Reform or Revolution?’ by Rosa Luxemburg. We will be discussing this short pamphlet and the important ideas which arise from it. It’s our first meeting so feel free to come along, even if you have not read the book! The reading is free online at www.tinyurl.com/srrg01  For more details get in touch: Search ‘Stroud Radical Reading Group’   StroudRRG@gmail.com

“Are there no workhouses?” asked Mr Scrooge,
(In a manner of speaking)
“Well, yes there are”, she politely replied,
(In a manor of speaking)
“Do you know Stone Manor on Bisley Road,
Near Stroud Cemetery’s Pauper’s Path?”
(Rattle his bones over the stones,
He’s only a pauper who nobody owns)
Here comes the creaking wheelbarrow,
With the open hinged, burnished coffin,
The shrouded corpse ready for the open pit,
An abrupt incarceration on the hard rock,
Without ceremony or by your leave,
Anonymous resting place for the restless dead,
Feeling gravity’s pull down the steep scarp,
And the noxious effects of the acid soil;
But with soil so thin, rock so hard, pits so shallow,
Cotswold storms raining in from the sea
Would disinter corpses, the slipping dead,
Strange meandering memento mori,
Gewgaws, bones, trinkets, keepsakes,
Grave work for Old Father Time in his sou-wester,
Leaching the dead down rain-washed rivulets,
Down to the Frome, thence the Severn and the sea,
While forget me nots waved goodbye in the wind.

Forced Walks and Holocaust Day

A message from Richard White:
Greetings walkers…I thought you might be interested in this update on the Honouring Esther project I am doing with Lorna Brunstein….repatriating memory, renewing stories, generating resonances.

Our project to complete the Forced Walk: Honouring Esther is now in good shape for the walk in Germany on 4 and 5 February. We will walk the actual route of the death march from the site of the slave labour camp to the Belsen-Bergen Memorial, stopping as we did in Somerset in April at points along the way to listen to Esther’s testimony and other thoughts and sounds. At those points we will share as much as we can of the experience, amplify the resonances via social media, and welcome online interaction with those who want to share it with us. We will gather sounds and images from those moments as we walk the route 71 years to the day that Esther did.

More detail on the web site herehttps://forcedwalks.wordpress.com/the-walk-in-germany-2016/

If you are thinking of joining us on foot it is time to make your arrangements and please contact us directly.

There will be a further briefing for those wanting to follow online soon.

We have spent a lot of time on logistics and fundraising and now it istime to focus on the art, with that in mind for those of you able  to get to Bath we would like to invite you to an open conversation at
44AD Gallery, Bath on Sunday 17 Jan afternoon 16.00-18.00.
An opportunity to explore the issues and help us reflect on our practice as artists in this context. If you are thinking of joining us on foot, but haven’t decided, do come along.  If you are able to make this please RSVP, thanks.

Our networking in Germany is taking off and it looks like we will have some great support and local walkers joining us. It may be that we will meet someone who saw the group of Polish Jewish women leaving the camp called Waldeslust, 71 years ago. In Somerset we had Mayors and it looks like we will be met by the Mayor at Winsen at the end of day 1. This will be a powerful experience, whatever your involvement has been to date, you are making this possible. Join us on foot or online

Best wishes
Richard


— 

Richard White
mob: 07717012790

web: www.walknowtracks.co.uk

Bath Disenchantment Walk

A message from Richard White:
Hi folks,

Here’s an instant write up of the walk on Sunday. Thankyou to the intrepid Kathryn for joining me if only for part of the way…it got worse but then it got better!

https://rswpost.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/a-journey-to-the-edge-of-the-enchanted-city/

This is an open project, I am really keen to develop it further looking for some points to stop and think about walking out of necessity, poverty, dreams, memorialising and enchantment/disenchantment.  I hope we can develop this together, share thoughts, ideas and information….it would be good to weave into this stories of individuals, families etc. In this walk I want to draw attention to the Bath Union Workhouse burial ground…seems wrong to me that all those people, all those lives, are not memorialised in some way in a city where the great and the ‘good’ are so well memorialised however short their stay! I am indebted to John Payne for helping get this started….check out his contribution on the burial ground to the Honouring Esther walk in Somerset here

The plan is to come back to this later in the year and I hope you will join me then.

Meantime its full on for our  Forced Walks:Honouring Esther project in February, if you are thinking of taking part on foot it is time to get organised!

If you would like to join in online you will be able to do so via facebook and twitter I will email an update on that. If you would like to find out more and join the conversation come along to the session at 44AD on Sunday 17 Jan at 16.00. More details here

best wishes
Richard

 

—

Richard White
mob: 07717012790

web: www.walknowtracks.co.uk

James Pentney and the Alien Factory

A message from James Pentney:

I’ve tried to explain a bit more about The Alien Factory although it remains something of a mystery until we’ve done it on the 16th. I am finding the process interesting and creative if also on the edge.
What follows is written in the form of the opening scene of a play introducing characters J, C and K. It is also reportage on the conception of a performance / drama workshop that will take place this month with the Allsorts youth club in Stroud.

THE ALIEN FACTORY (Episode One … true so far)
Youth club hub-ub, kids mulling, eating crisps
J (late middle aged, balding, bearded, beside a pool table)
“Hello everyone, can we turn the music off for a minute please
I’ve just popped in to ask if anyone would like to try to do a show after Christmas.
You know there’s pantomimes and things so I thought we might do something in the hall here;
maybe make up a story
How about Aladdin or Jack and the Beanstalk, Aladdin and the Beanstalk, Jack’s Cat …”
C (teenage girl) “Charlie And The Chocolate Factory”
K (boy) “How about aliens?”
C “Charlie and the Alien Factory”
K “Just The Alien Factory”
J “We’ll need a bit of a script to follow”
C “I’ll do that”
J “Fine I’ll come back next time then”
As good as her word, two weeks later C produced her pencilled pages
C “… so the founder of the factory is Jimmy Zonka, that’s you (J)
J “ Does the factory make aliens or do aliens work in the factory?
C Yes and Jimmy Zonka has an idea for a competition for kids to make something new so there are tickets and there’s a nerd kid who has a ticket, that’s you (K) and I have a ticket and I come up with the new thing
K So you’re like the hero
C And the aliens are free to go home to their own planet
J Sounds like you’re a new Doctor Who. Let’s do it.

(to be continued following the performance workshop on 16 January that will involve set construction, music, dance, storytelling and shadow puppetry for alien production)

Bath Disenchantment Walks 2016 Programme

Hi folks,
I walked out to Saltford yesterday and the tow path is really muddy with one section impassable so I propose to have a go at finding a way up to the Workhouse burial ground on Sunday. Its a recce for something I would like to explore later in the year the route from the National Trust picturesque view across the city from Widcombe fields to Odd Down.
Its a loop walk but there is a bus service back down into town from the Red Lion roundabout.
As ever meet outside 44AD Gallery 10.00 Sunday.
The walk offers some great views, spaces to imagine the enchanted city; thinking about who built it and worked it and the economic migrants it attracted we may see another enchantment, thinking about the productive and the unproductive poor we will reach the former workhouse and go looking for their unmarked graves.
I hope you can join me, come prepared for mud and a few hills! Back in town by 16.00 at the latest.
best wishes for a happy, healthy New Year on foot and on line!

Richard

A message from Richard White:
‘Festive greetings, walkers!
Walkout Sundays continue into next year….walking and talking a bit further as the days lengthen.
Here is an outline plan:

In the first few walks I want to explore more on the slave trade and the legacies of slavery and empire…the focus is on the Brass MIlls on the Avon, one of which survives at Saltford. Brass goods were made here for trading in West Africa for slaves… I am interested to explore an idea about goods traded in the first leg of the triangular trade were made using the energy of the river Avon….what went down the river, what came back…attitudes to fellow humans, trade, sweat etc. I have a thought that the currency of the slave trade was manufactured along the river just outside Bath..but that maybe over egging it.
We will walk through the remains of early industrialisation, a coal field and ghosts of Bath’s engineering past all now smoothed, concealed perhaps, in a romantically landscaped valley…how does it feel and what stories will start to surface….how can we tell them…

Sunday 3 Jan: Saltford loop….out on the tow path and back on the old railway line ( or back on the bus if you prefer…)
Sunday 7 Feb: No walk. I will be travelling back from Germany from the Forced Walk: Honouring Esther we walk on the Thursday and Friday 4 and 5 Feb…why not join us…on foot or online.
Sunday 6 March: Saltford loop reversed
Sunday 3 April: Bath to Avonmouth on the River Avon Trail
As the days get longer I want to explore an idea around the memorialising and the treatment of poor people and those unable to work in Bath, in particular I want to start to develop a walking route from Chewton Mendip into Bath finishing at the Bath workhouse burial ground by the Red Lion at Odd Down. Walking, talking and the undeserving poor?

Sunday 1 May: A walk via the ornate Victorian graveyard at Smallcombe to the unmarked graves at the Workhouse burial ground
Sunday 5 May: Bath to Chewton Mendip
Sunday 3 July: Chewton Mendip to Bath
Sunday 7 August: tbc
Sunday 4 September: tbc

The common theme in all this is enchantment/disenchantment and I really hope you would like to contribute to capturing throughts and ideas in some form or another. The walks are participatory and any information, stories, myths or rumours that you can bring to this the better. Please share! From October onwards I hope to be able to offer some of these walks more formally on the basis of what we have developed over this year of walking out!
Have a good festive week/weekend and I look forward to seeing you outside 44AD at 10.00 on Sunday 3 Jan.’

We have funding to make a film about the 1839 Chartist mass meeting on Selsley Common – more details to follow

GRAND DEMONSTRATION

May 21st, 1839

To the Men and Women of GloucestershireTake Notice! That a county MEETING of theInhabitants of Gloucestershire, will be holden on SELSLEY HILL In the Borough of Stroud, on Whit Tuesday, May 21st to take into consideration the best means to be adopted in order to secure the passing of thePEOPLE’S CHARTER And to give Effect to the present Agitation A Deputation from the “General Convention” consisting of Messrs. Carpenter, Mealing and Neesom, will attend, also Deputations from various Associations in the County. The Chair will be taken at 12 o’clock. We particularly urge the attendance of all those who value their Political Freedom, and who have at heart the welfare, prosperity and happiness of the Nation, and let them remember “For a Nation to be free, it is sufficient that she wills it.”

In order to remove any misapprehension respecting the legality of the Meeting, we beg to state that we shall be entirely regulated by the Motto

PEACE, LAW and ORDER and sincerely hope that all those who attend will be guided by the same principles.


#RefugeesWelcome EFL @RefugeesEFL

‘Referee!
You can see what’s going on!
Don’t look the other way!
You know the history of migration and colonialism!
Remember when Prince Rupert sailed to Barbados,
To keep the islands Royalist after his defeat at Bristol –
A determined proponent of the Royal African Company,
He preposterously laid claim to the entire African Atlantic coast:
‘All the singular Ports, Harbours, Creeks, Islands lakes and places’;
You might say he started it.

So give these refugees a refuge,
And don’t spit out the word “refugee”
Like it’s a swear word or an expletive,
Remember where the word comes from –
From the word, “refuge”:
A soft and welcoming word,
Like haven or sanctuary.
And don’t prefix “asylum-seekers”
With the word “bogus”:
Instead help those who want sanctuary
Reach the home team’s dressing room,
For there is no security in the visitors’ temporary dressing-room:
It’s crowded, overwhelming and threatening.

So, come on ref,
Give these refugees a refuge,
And well done everyone for raising your banners aloft
Last Saturday – but let’s keep it going.’

#RefugeesWelcome EFL @RefugeesEFL

We are FGR
And STFC
COYR
COYG

Shiraz Akoo’s Post-Redemption Exhibition at the Pink Cabbage: Alison Woodgate Saves the Year

You thought Redemption was good?
Well, you aint seen nothing yet.

Akoo’s new exhibition is not to be missed:
He is, quite simply, and quite brilliantly, curating an empty space.

There is absolutely nothing there.

Denoting?

Denoting nothing?

Or, denoting everything?

Is there an enigma wrapped within a pink cabbage’s conundrum,
Or is there simply an empty space?

I think Akoo is pointing to the incompatibility of logic and lexis:
This empty space hints at infinity of possible creation:
Nothing is everything.

Conventional exhibitions of objects and art denote creation –
And those very acts of creation contain within themselves
The destruction of infinite possibility:
The angel within the marble turns out to be Lucifer:
To create is to destroy.

But, to reiterate, to curate an empty space is to …
Signpost the incompatibility of logic and lexis –
LOGIC and LEXIS.
Akoo provides another subtle twist on this theme
By keeping the shop door locked,
Even though there is a sign saying,
‘OPEN’.

Culture vultures have to press their noses against the shop window,
Whilst Akoo silently announces:
‘THE KINGS OF ART HAVE NO CLOTHES’.

But wait, all is not lost: Paradise is regained –
Here come Rob and Alison Woodgate,
With Indian summer, golden autumn and Christmas cheer:
So make your way to the Pink Cabbage,
For creative shopping,
For the last few months of the year.

Neville Gabie’s Collective Breath at the SVA

Pluck a number from out of the aether,
Preferably, a numerical palindrome,
Indicating a Janus-like equality:
One thousand one hundred and eleven, for example.
1,111 is a number symbolizing a union
Of the individual and the collective:
A fusion of self and society:
‘I am he as you are she as you are me
And we are all together’ –
Which is where the aether comes in.

Neville Gabie has WOMAD-collected
The exhalations of this number of people,
Bagged them and fused them and released them
From a Brobdingnagian–like apparatus,
In a release of collective air that took 49 seconds:
7 times 7;
And even a solitary 7
Is a magical number at the most quotidian of times –
But seven to the power of seven is an alchemical,
Numerological representation of Interdependence:
The self and society, a harmony of parts,
A state of social beatitude – peace through diversity:
We all share the same air, equally, communally, globally,
With no airs and graces, affectation, and putting on airs,
In theory;
And,
In theory,
No pollution, respiratory problems and global carbon-credits.

So Neville Gabie’s Malmesbury collection of breath,
Is nothing like the exploits of the failed aerial flight
Of the medieval monk of Malmesbury,
Instead the Connemara release of Collective Breath into Atlantic skies,
Over an ocean’s waves, breakers, currents, spume and spray,
Echoes the wireless pioneering of Gugliemo Marconi:
The sound of our interconnectedness:
‘I am he as you are she as you are me
And we are all together.’

FGR vs Bristol Rovers

Not Sherwood FOREST
Nor Lincoln GREEN,
But FOREST GREEN;
Not Robin Hood and Little John,
But Dale Vince and David Drew;
Not outlaws and poachers,
But leftwingers and goal poachers;
Not the pollution of ‘The Gas’,
But the clean power of the wind;
Not the lawlessness of ‘The Pirates’,
But the traditions of the handloom weavers and spinners;
Not the slaving profits of Bristol,
But the anti-slavery arch of Archway:
COYFGR Levellers and Diggers,
Let’s try to turn the world upside down.