Summary of Report © Ken Wolverton & Rosie Gibson
It’s funny how conversations lead into others. When I met David Harding in ATELIER PUBLIC earlier this year he spoke at length about an exhibition he remembered from the seventies in Edinburgh. I tried to find out more through the internet but wasn’t having much luck. Then Rosie Gibson emailed me about other things connected to ATELIER PUBLIC and briefly mentioned the very same exhibition and her memories of being involved.
Serendipity at play, Rosie then contacted Ken Wolverton, the artist behind ‘Organised Accident is Art’ and their conversations and recollections make up the following text.
1977
‘Atelier Public’ brings back memory of another ‘participatory-art-in-a-gallery-context-event’. In the dim and distant past of1977 I took part in a week long exhibition/event at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh called ‘Organised Accident is Art’ put together by artist Ken Wolverton.
As coordinator of Craigmillar Festival Society’s Art Team (CAT), I remember the team building a silk screen press under the direction of John Phillips from Paddington Print Shop. We were in the middle of converting a disused church in Craigmillar into an Arts Resource Centre. The silk screen press was subsequently installed in the Arts Centre and had many years of happy use (perhaps enhanced by the liberal use of carbon tetrachloride as screen cleaning fluid which was standard practice at the time!).
Under the direction of CAT team artist Mike Greenlaw we also created a daily wall montage by inviting visitors to do a drawing to add to the wall. There was a sequence of themes, for example a plan of their house, favourite food…..(eeek!). I’ve forgotten this, but from the archival material we might also have invited people to paint a brick. The bricks were then taken back and used to build a path at the Arts Centre.
Our involvement in ‘Organised Accident is Art’ was devised by Neil Cameron, Director of Arts at Craigmillar Festival Society at the time. Craigmillar Festival Society (1962-2002) was a grassroots organisation on a peripheral housing estate on the south east of Edinburgh. Under their slogan ‘art as the catalyst’ – a remarkable team of local activists headed up by Helen Crummy pioneered social, cultural, educational and environmental change and improvement by harnessing people’s creativity and creative energy and by collaborating with like minded professionals.
CFS was one of the partners in the exhibition, but the project was the brain child of artist Ken Wolverton who had been awarded a grant by the Leverhulme Trust to develop community arts in Edinburgh’s ‘notorious’ peripheral housing schemes – Pilton, Craigmillar, and others.
I skyped Ken in his home near Santa Fe:
Organised Accident is Art © Ken Wolverton & Rosie Gibson
When I look back I think this is at least one thing in my life I was in on at the beginning. In the late 60’s and early 70’s the idea of ‘alternative education through the arts’ began to emerge at Theatre Workshop in Edinburgh with Neil Cameron and Reg Bolton among others. It’s a commonplace idea in education in America now but at the time it was new. It felt radical and dynamic. And very fluid. Edinburgh was a great place to be in those days – so much happening and so many great people.
Ken received a Leverhulme grant for 7 (!) years from 1975- 1982 – almost unthinkable now. He was based at Theatre Workshop in Edinburgh. It was the first time they had awarded a grant to an art project rather than science and medical initiatives.
Through his work in Pilton and other areas he gained a sense that there was a lot of unguided energy in the kids he was working with. Through the murals and sculptures he was trying to go with their energy and make something beautiful out of it – a bit like the principles of jujitsu. He also learned that to be an artist alone is not enough in this work – he needed to be a teacher and an organiser as well.
In 1976 he got wind of a ten day gap in the Fruitmarket programming for the next year. He came up with the idea of having an exhibition which would be a gathering of pioneering community artists and dedicated activists he’d met from all over Britain in the course of his research travels as part of the Leverhulme grant.
He harassed the Fruitmarket till they eventually gave in, then spent a year organising the exhibition, with the invaluable help of Stella Ensdale, the administrator of Theatre Workshop. He says he couldn’t have done it without her. She transformed his scribbles into grant applications and administered the whole thing. The Scottish Arts Council at the time didn’t recognise community arts as an artform to be funded. This project was the first to get a grant from them for a community arts project.
He then spent a lot of time scrounging materials from factories and industrial sites – fabric, foam rubber, 100 lengths of scaffolding, two bales of woven rope, 2000ft of string, ￡250 worth of paint, 25 beards and the rest!
He argued for the title ‘Organised Accident is Art’ with his compadres at Theatre Workshop. Some thought ‘Art’ was elitist, some hated ‘Organised’. The only word that wasn’t contested was ’is’ so he went ahead anyway and gave it his title. It seemed to sum up his experience of working in communities – he needed to stay flexible and open to what was happening (and there was always something happening!) and make something out of that rather going in with a game plan. This approach resonates with that of Alan Watts, Zen philosopher, and a series of recordings he made called ‘The Art of Controlled Accident’.
It was amazing for him to gather together all these specialists he had met on his travels – and to combine them with artists and performers associated with Theatre Workshop, Craigmillar Festival Society and Pilton. They just had enough of a budget to pay people expenses and a stipend.
Each day a main featured event happened in the open reception area and there were events all day long in the whole space – a giant climbing net for kids, designed and installed by artist, Chrissie Orr, indoor street theatre with Gerry Mulgrew, dance/mime with Christina Halliday a spontaneous graffiti mural with Ken, puppetry, and writing and poetry. The event was video and photo documented by David Halliday.
Ken recalls one ‘accident’
Some “lads” from Pilton and Craigmillar had joined in the “Graffiti mural” which in the end of the work became a very nostalgic and beautiful symbolic/figurative piece. A very pushy kind of gal came in and demanded that IT WAS A GRAFFITI MURAL therefore she was going to do graffiti on it, and picked up a big brush and started painting some obscenity over the panels… and that enraged the young lads who up unto that day had been purveyors of obscenities themselves, so we had to stop them from actually beating up the gal for messing with their ART…it was definitely the phenomena of ownership and a shared pride these young guys assumed, taking in the lesson of what we had been trying to get them doing for years.
Six and a half thousand people came through the doors in that week. That compared with 7 thousand for an exhibition over a period of four weeks during the Edinburgh Festival.
It built in momentum as the time went on. The exhibition had visits from City leaders and Church leaders, who were enthusiastic. Ricky Demarco was very supportive. Lots of schools came along. They did take some flack. Ken reckons the split was 50/50 between those who appreciated and enjoyed the exhibition and those who didn’t.
Each evening they managed to organise free food as an enticement to the participating artists to stay for a seminar and discussion about the day.
The discussion started with the featured events of the day. As the week went on, they became clearer and more confident in what they were doing. Carol Kenna from Greenwich Mural Workshop was very articulate. One thing Ken remembers was an emerging understanding that working with people, people joining in was part of the work they were all were trying to make. As he says, ‘I mean I could do a painting on my own, but that wasn’t the point of this work we were doing.’
The event also attracted quite a bit of publicity in the local newspapers, fielded and formed by Bob Palmer, director of Theatre Workshop.
articles about the exhibition
It’s fascinating putting these two reminiscences together. If my memory is the trees, then Ken’s is the wood. In terms of legacy, many of those involved have continued to develop their practice all over the world. A spontaneous mural was painted on the wall opposite the Fruitmarket gallery in Market Street which lasted for many years and the silk screen press was used for years to produce posters at the Arts Centre.
Looking into the archival material it looks as if the budget for the project was as follows:
Income:
Scottish Arts Council £1800
Gulbenkian Foundation £700
Total £2500
= today ￡14,175
In kind sponsor ship £1400
= today ￡8000
Plus admin costs covered by Theatre Workshop and the Craigmillar Festival Society and Ken’s fee covered by Leverhulme grant.
Looking back these did seem like simpler times. Simpler and more fluid at the same time. Not that I’m arguing against complexity. Ideally we would be in a time of complexity and fluidity!
Some links to some of the artists involved
Ken Wolverton Chrissie Orr Neil Cameron John Bolton Mike Rowan Gerry Mulgrew Craigmillar Festival Society Arts team Bob Palmer John Philips Carol Kenna, Steve Lobb
Text courtesy of and © Rosie Gibson and Ken Wolverton
