Words by Ruby Lewis, Community Lead
While building The Commons, Spectra were invited to partake in the launch of The People’s Gallery. The People’s Gallery is a large community space within Midland Met Hospital – on the 5th floor near the Welcome Centre. It consists of a series of huge, movable panels for displaying artwork. We worked with the community to produce work which is exhibited in this space, alongside two other organisations, Mothership and Tom Hicks.
Our vision for the exhibition was to tell the story of how Spectra works in the world; our guiding principles that drive i) what we do, and ii) how we do it. The physical, creative output from workshops represent a proportion of our delivery. We also create nourishing, sensory spaces that centre nature and play, invite healing and connection and bring people together. To show this, our exhibition needed to be twofold, both work made from a new series of workshops designed to embody our ethos, and photographs from Spectra’s back catalogue with accompanying text.
For the workshops, we worked with our ongoing partners – SAFs and Brushstrokes – with whom we have built a trusting relationship with participants. They are joyfully open to trying new ideas we bring to them. The workshops were open ended invitations for making. We set out materials to be explored, growing curiosity together with participants as we played with using them in different ways. We invited a reaction, to which we responded – following and leading in turn – a circular way of making.
At SAFs, workshops began with rolling clay in our hands rhythmically, moving between palms and in ways which brought satisfaction and comfort, squishing, squeezing, scraping, we added liquid to feel how movable and slick clay becomes. We soaked paper with red stains, moulding, shifting materials closer and further from the face, the body, the imprints of that play left in marks and lines on the cream paper lining the table. We focused on transferring the material while continuing to explore the motion. We explored combining raw wool, water soap, and motion to transform fibre. The friction from movement created shapes. We worked at varying paces, stopping to smell the lanolin on our hands, feel the squish of the bubbly water, the ringing into form. Swapping these between our hands, our little bundles of wool took different shapes.
Transforming our materials again, we took little round oak galls the size of the end of your thumb. Bone dry, light, crumbly, and dotted with holes, we crushed the galls. Squeezing water over the dust, we watched how almost immediately the alchemy begins. Water, brewing like tea, into a deep, brown ink. We’re playing with time here as a tool for making.
In the proceeding workshops, we continued making a variety of different inks. Straining out vinegar from pickles, we watched it turn pink to blue, as it was exposed to the air. Adding salt, we saw how little clear stars are made in the colour. Adding fire through charcoal, we felt the dry dust of it gather in our finger tips. The paper we worked onto was placed from table to floor to dry, and then picked back up by someone else in the group to be experimented with more. Circular rhythms of play and texture. Collaborative passing back and forth of jars of colour, pinches of turmeric placed in palms to scatter, tipping out ink-soaked wool balls onto a page letting them bounce down to reach someone else. Finishing the workshop, we stood in pairs, holding the paper between each other, moving it with the inky wool balls balanced atop. The paper was like an ocean shifting, our ink balls little ships bobbing about, their paths leaving imprints behind as they roll and bounce. Tiny trace maps of our work together.
Spectra’s workshops hold the same ritual ways of working, including in a circular common space. With SAFs, we slowly shared different materials into a central space. When working with Brushstrokes, this involved placing a pile of looms, grasses, wool, paper strips in the middle of a table. Circular looms, pre-strung using hazel withies; handmade square, box, and wire looms; traditional, square looms that could be strung in unusual ways. Using these required sitting with people individually to help start play. To show someone something, to learn a little and apply that in lots of ways. To fail, get tangled, and untangle themselves. To learn from others. Weaving is universal and I’m always astonished by the wealth of people’s connection to it. One woman showed me how her mother finished her weaving when making doormats for their home. Others can’t quite remember a particular stitch their grandmother did, but their hands are busy learning the way again.
The looms are passed around, held in the commons of this making, each piece touched by many hands, choosing colour, texture, width, breadth, tightness. We admire together how things are being built line by line, how some things are unravelled and then pulled back together. Holding the making in this common space, in circles, moving something from hand to hand.
All of the physical output from these workshops was then hung in the gallery, by two fantastic technicians. It is open for the world to see, for visitors to spend time with, for staff to sit and eat their lunches nearby. If you are at the hospital please go and visit! Let us know what you think and whether hearing about the process changes what you think about the work. If you can’t get to the gallery but would like to hear more we created an audio description of the show that we hope gives you a good taste of what the show is.
Collaboration can be immediate and short-lived but the real richness of this work is having deep-rooted ongoing practice in which we work together over long periods. Having time to nourish. It’s why we continue to work with all our fantastic partners. It’s why we have an amazing Community Company, made up of performers who have been collaborating for over 10 years. And, it’s why I’m delighted to say that we will be working in The Commons for the next two years.
Time to grow roots, to uncover, and to collaborate. We can’t wait to share our programme of making, planting, and more, that will be happening in the space soon! We are busy planning a beautiful performance for June which will be hosted in The Commons, we will be in touch soon to invite everyone along.
In the meantime, please use The Commons as just that, a common space, for us to share and use, open to all.