As part of my work experience with Fusion Arts, I began to sort through the organisation's extensive archive documenting its involvement in community arts from 1977 to the present day.
This involved sorting through a range of different material: scrapbooks full of keepsakes from different projects, piles of photographs, newspaper clippings, CDs and even a pair of drumsticks that I was later told were part of the Young Women Music project.
This unconventional, almost experimental archive creates a valuable narrative through its interconnected map of the different ways art has been used in the city to connect and build communities, preserve the memories of East Oxford, and ultimately make positive change. This creates an important understanding of how community based art can be used in the future.
This archive is not only a record of Fusion Art’s involvement with community arts but also documents a unique perspective of the history of East Oxford.
As I went through the archive, I assembled a small pile of different materials on a project from 2005 called Insite that Fusion helped run. It sought to immortalise the memories of the Cowley Road community as well as the area's collective sense of identity through small, bronze plaques. One symbolised the Caribbean social club that used to be on the street, others celebrated well known local figures such as the owners of the butchers shop and the Excelsior cafe.
There were also several odes to the activism that has continued in the area such as one depicting an anti-war protest and another showing the suffragette march from the town hall. The story of the project is told in the archive through several booklets and posters; small orange hand out cards for locals to use to contribute their memories; a newspaper clipping relating to a small feud with the local council over a plaque that was seen as too vulgar; and a script or a documentary made about the project 5 years later, in 2010.
Another project that sought to immortalise the memories of a community was the Memories in the Making project with the West Indian old people’s group where an artist recorded and discussed the memories the attendees had of the Caribbean as well as moving to England. The archive contains a booklet full of extensive notes documenting the individual stories of each of the attendees of the workshops, photos and objects from their childhoods that they had brought in as well as the folk stories they told from their homelands.
There were also intricate diagrams and drawings of how these ideas and images could be incorporated onto a banner, combining the steel pan drums that they remembered from carnivals, the natural landscape of flowers and fruits, as well as life in Oxford and more difficult memories of dealing with the racist English society that sought to exclude them. These things were expressed through a border of photographs, some of the writing and poetry of the participants, the bright colours of flags and fabrics brought in by the participants.
However this is only a small part of the long legacy that the West Indian Centre has had in Oxford. As I went through the archive I found many connections with the group and Fusion, like a page of photos in the 1990 scrapbook that also notes that they were a group Fusion worked with ‘on a long term basis.’ There is a similar page in a record from 1993 as well as a collection of photos from a session with Fusion in 1998. These have become increasingly relevant after the demolition of the centre more recently. This work also has strong links to several recent projects that Fusion is currently working on: The Windrush Project and the Caribbean Living Room.
Another interesting thing I noted when I was exploring the archive was how some of the values of collaboration were reflected in the record keeping process.
In a drumming and lantern making workshop with Larkrise primary school it was the children who recorded the process of the workshop and summarised how it went. One student wrote: ‘druming is rilly fun’ and another did a helpful drawing of one of the drums. The lantern making section of the project appeared to be equally successful, however one student didn’t seem to be happy with some of their design choices, writing: ‘I finisht my lanten it is rubish because it is gold with a perple river down it.’ While including participants in the record keeping process creates a stronger focus on the participants an issue with this method is that some children have a tendency to go off topic. One page of the book was covered by a detailed drawing of a stick man getting struck by lightning and another had a diagram of some fire (helpfully labelled as ‘fire’) that seemed a bit unrelated.
I also learnt a huge amount about the different methods of collaboration and community building. I found a poster advertising a ‘Multidisciplinary Music Workshop’ from around 1995, with the phrase ‘poets and dancers are welcome too’ plastered diagonally across it in bright red print. However it doesn’t stop at that; the poster goes on to include all age groups, any instruments and all art mediums (even sculpture) in order to create ‘wild outrageous fun!!!’.
This culture of not shying away from a bit of chaos for the sake of enjoyment seems to be something Fusion arts has focused on for a long time.
As well as this, the poster reflects the long term prioritisation of inclusion. In fact much of the promotional material I found carried this message. Workshops constantly left admissions open to a range of people, openness to negotiation when it came to fees was often advertised and projects that encouraged collaboration between many different art practices were common.
Another one of my favourite posters I found was one from 1994 advertising a Mediajam workshop. It aimed to ‘put into practice grassroots media’ teaching people guerilla billboarding, flyposting, how to make zines, video production, and more. Ignoring the promotion of some slightly illegal activities, the workshop focuses on developing skills that give the participants a voice in their communities in order to create the opportunity for activism and change.
This reminded me of a document I had found . Paperclipped inside one of the earliest pieces of documentation I had found (a scrapbook from 1979) is an article describing the importance of community based art not only in making connections within a community but also for creating local based media. This is an approach of centering the values and ideas of a community through creating media at a local level combating the overwhelming influence of standard media such as advertisements, mainstream films etc that everyday people rarely get control over. It also represents groups who are rarely given the opportunity to be seen in a positive light in conventional media and gives them back autonomy in presenting for themselves how they want to be seen. This has huge potential in activism, including in the present day, as it does not rely on news and social media coverage in order to have a cause heard.
This grassroots media movement is one of many ways that art can create a push for change in a community, however it is not the only use of art as protest that is shown in the archive.
Also from the 1979 scrapbook there is a series of photos of the street show Warden it be luverly that used performance art as a direct form of protest demonstrating against the closing of a homeless shelter. The photos show a creative use of costume and props that immediately grab your attention, and the nature of the street performance meant that the art could be brought directly to the area affected by the new closure. I also discovered a newspaper clipping from around 1982 that described a ‘mothers march against the bomb’ protest along Cowley Road that Fusion attended. They provided sketch artists for entertainment. Here while the art itself didn’t directly contribute to the protest, it was used to help support it.
There were other parts of the archive that also have a strong relevance to current issues such as the treatment of refugees in the UK.
A small book from a 2003 project at the asylum seekers detention centre near Kidlington entitled ‘A Journey through Campsfield’ contains a collection of written material: poems and letters expressing the difficult and painful feelings resulting from being incarcerated and separated from friends and family as well as the traumatic process of coming to the UK after fleeing from dangerous situations. The work is deeply emotive, including translations from many languages and each one bringing a new insight in the cruelty of the conditions there but also humanising the authors who have been purposefully distanced from the rest of society and dehumanised, something used to justify their incarceration. Just over 20 years later, likely caused by an increase in anti- immigration sentiment, there are plans to reopen the detention centre. This makes this part of the archive all the more important as the actions of arts activists and campaigns of protesters can be once again used to fight the issue in order to not repeat the mistakes of the past.
I am so grateful towards Fusion Arts for the welcoming and supportive environment as well as the opportunity to gain access to the archives.
Through reading through and researching around the archive I feel like I have gained so much knowledge of the city around me and the many ways art has connected people and how rich and interwoven the networks it has built can be. It also creates a strong sense of hopefulness that is desperately needed at the present moment that change can be reached and that creative practices such as these can have a huge, positive impact on local communities as well as more broadly. The archive contains so many resources that can inform future arts based activism as well as preserve lots of important local histories.
