Slate or State // Llechi A Llafur
- Submitting institution
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University of Newcastle upon Tyne
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 257862-84091-1285
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- Bangor, North Wales; Machynlleth, Mid-Wales, Whitley Bay
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- -
- Year of first exhibition
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This is an extended Arts Council/National Trust-funded research project with multiple outputs.
• It is a long-form creative work with multiple components demonstrating sustained research effort over a period of more than one year. The project involved creating a number of large-scale artworks including a film and a number of participatory events with local communities
• It involved undertaking a complex, extended and multi-layered process of collective and individual creative investigation. The project examined its topic from multiple perspectives and involved many parties in its co-production, including artists, film makers, the local community and heritage organisations
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- ‘Llechi a Llafur / Slate or State’ at Penrhyn Castle, a National Trust property in North Wales, was the culmination of a series of artist residencies at the property, commissioned through the Trust New Art programme as the first partnership between the Trust and Arts Council Wales (2014-17).
Walker & Bromwich’s project draws on their participatory art practice and experience of working with communities to explore “the role art can play as an active agent in society, evolving environments and situations within which people can begin to re-examine the world around them.”
Their response to the brief to show “Penrhyn in a world context” focussed on The Great Strike of 1900-03, a bitter dispute about pay and working conditions between the Welsh workers at Penrhyn Slate Quarry and its English owners, the Pennant Family, who built the Castle on the profits they made from local slate. The artists collaborated with Côr y Penrhyn (the local male voice choir), locally-based artists and other community participants to bring Welsh voices inside the Castle and foreground the story of The Great Strike through a performance with supporting artworks – banners stating the original demands of the striking quarry workers and a large inflatable sculpture representing the quarry – also co-produced with the community. The artworks together with a film documenting the project were exhibited in the Castle until the end of the summer season.
‘Llechi a Llafur / Slate or State’ is an early example of an emerging trend in contemporary art commissions in heritage sites other than museums to engage artists in revealing hidden and marginalised histories by working with local communities. In the context of Penrhyn, Walker & Bromwich’s project can be characterised as an act of social justice that empowered the local community to address both historic and present-day inequities.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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