Trouble at home
A problem has developed in the Biggs Collings household. Matt is jealous of my blog. Every time I go near my computer, which like anyone in the modern world, I do throughout the day, for a multitude of reasons, he says ‘Stop blogging. Our show is going to fail because of your blog. You are not paying enough attention.’ This is an unjust accusation, but it is true that today I am not paying much attention, because my friend Pam has come to stay.
Pam (above left) lives in Stoke-on-Trent, ceramic capital of the world. She was a guerilla this week, in Burslem, the ‘Mother Town’. Burslem is one of the six towns that make up the city of Stoke. Stoke is still oddly and charmingly parochial. They say you can meet people in Burslem who have never been to Longton, which — for Londoners — is more or less like living in Holloway all your life and and never having visited Islington. Burslem is the oldest of the towns, and it was here that Josiah Wedgwood established his first factory. Pam was a former student of the Burslem School of Art. At one time Stoke had more art schools than any other city in the UK. The ceramic industry had an unending need for trained painters and sculptors. Coincidentally The City and Guilds, where Matt and I have been teaching, is a London art school that also owes its existence to the ceramic industry.
Pam cares about the future of the Mother Town — so cruelly blighted by the decimation of the ceramic industry. This week she took part in a consciousness raising event. Volunteers assembled in the School of Art, were issued with powerful torches, and set out into the night. The street lights were extinguished, and a terrace of houses, a potbank, and the Wedgwood Institute ( a former educational establishment and a fabulously beautiful building) were illuminated only by torch light.
The event was run by Guerilla Lighting. The pictures here are used with the kind permission of Paul Pickard.
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