Bath Arts Workshop:
Counterculture in the 1970s
BRIAN POPAY, CORINNE D’CRUZ,
JENNIE POTTER-BARRIE, PENNY DALE, PHIL SHEPHERD, THORNTON KAY AND VICTORIA FORBES ADAM
An intimate and often hilarious account of how a 1970s counterculture exploded upon
an 18th-century city
• FREE DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE SOON
• FREE DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE SOON
They thought art could change the world
Thousands joined in and things
were never the same again
#beforewego
‘These were great days, days of hope.’
— Mike Westbrook, jazz pianist and composer
As the swinging 60s gave way to the turbulent 70s, a unique counterculture sprang up in Bath. Amidst the contrasting tapestry of Georgian architecture and post-war council estates, Bath Arts Workshop was born – a spectacular flowering of creative activity, community technology and social enterprise.
But what was it exactly and what were the people involved trying to achieve?
In this fascinating book, many of those involved tell their stories for the first time –
how it came about and their struggles to keep it going.
Daring, irreverent and often hilarious, it created a space for everyone to get involved, young and old alike.
At a time when people felt free to take risks, Bath Arts Workshop was a unique experiment, an everyday revolution that is still relevant today.
‘Like Inter-Action and Action Space and Welfare State, BAW introduced numerous artistic vocabularies that continue to mark practice today, but within a scene sadly shrunk from the sheer ebullient creativity of these early years. A book not to be missed.’
Dr Susan Croft, Director Unfinished Histories
‘I grew up in the formative years of the Bath Arts Workshop, where abstract creativity was a thing to be embraced not stifled. I wanted to be Rocky Ricketts. Luckily I got close and will be eternally grateful.’
Curt Smith, Tears for Fears
‘I absolutely love the book.’
Rob Llewellyn, actor, writer and comedian
‘The book is a major achievement, the more so for having been assembled so long after the actual events. It does its job superbly in recording and preserving a truly impressive - and important - body of creative/community performance work.’
Neil Hornick, writer, performer, director
Founder, The Phantom Captain
‘So important to tell these stories.’
Michael Eavis CBE, Glastonbury Festival
‘[The book] will certainly inspire and invigorate those who are contemplating comparable adventures – albeit in very different times – and it offers a template for what could be done in communities where energies are abundant but frustrated because support organisations are thin on the ground. Amongst other things, the book upends metropolitan assumptions about what constitutes an appropriate environment and audience for bizarre, engaging, highly designed, politically unsentimental performance work. Attitudes have developed considerably over the last few decades, of course, but the core values of the BAW will retain their relevance and practicality indefinitely.’
David Gale, writer, performer, lecturer
Co-director Lumiere & Son
‘Comtek means community technology. It is also a department of that example of anarchy harnessed to practical purposes – the Bath Arts Workshop.’
Terry Pratchett, Bath Evening Chronicle, 9 August 1975
‘An astonishingly researched and compiled history of a seminal arts/culture/community movement that was rooted in Bath but had influences around the world. Detailed, readable and packed with illustrations.’
Dr Luke Dixon
Writer, performance maker & beekeeper extraordinaire
‘Having worked in participatory arts for nearly 30 years it was wonderful to be able to look back at the accomplishments of Bath Arts Workshop through their new publication. It’s brilliant that they’ve collated their archive and secured it in print for future generations to see what they achieved. Their pioneering work was part of a movement which laid the foundations for organisations such as Strange Cargo to build upon. The generosity, humour, talent and avant garde ideas shaped people’s approach to making art that everyone could be part of. I love it!’
Brigitte Orasinski - Artistic Director, Strange Cargo
‘The time I spent with Bath Arts Workshop had a deep influence on my work for the next 40 years. This book will remind everyone of what was achieved. It gives us hope for the future.’
Ros Rigby OBE, Former Performance Programme Director, Sage Gateshead
‘It’s a fascinating history, and in the era of arts funding starvation that we are surely entering, an important history to share.
People – it CAN be done!’
David Curtis, author, London’s Arts Labs and the 60s Avant Garde
‘...what happened in Bath is of national importance. Here, in the late 1960s and 1970s, various interconnecting groups of young people began creating alternative networks and inventing new forms of community action. They changed the city, and their legacy can be seen (by those who know) in its unique fabric. But they also established models that worked and became precedents for community work in the region for decades to come.
It is arguable that nationally important Bath initiatives such as 5x5x5=Creativity and the Forest of Imagination would not have taken root in this soil if it had not been prepared by these people.’
François Matarasso, Honorary Professor, Gray’s School of Art, Robert Gordon University
Council Member, Arts Council England (2005-2013), Trustee, NESTA (1998-2003)
The Natural Theatre Company grew out of Bath Arts Workshop
LEARN MORE ABOUT NATURAL THEATRE COMPANY
With special thanks to the Nachman family and Somerset Film