City of Dreams: Social Engagement and Aesthetic Creation in the Cultural Olympiad

Abstract

Freedom Studios’s Cultural Olympiad performance The Mill – City of Dreams, created in a disused textile mill in Bradford, engaged deeply with its local constituency. However, the artists at the head of the project were reluctant to consider their project ‘socially engaged’. This semantic discomfort reveals a tension at the heart of the project: just what social role did the artists expect this performance to play in the life of the city? Or was this ‘just’ art? These questions cut to the heart of the Cultural Olympiad, which asks art to be both ‘great’ and to make ‘a sustained difference to the community’. The Olympiad might be one manifestation of the increasing interest in conceiving of the aesthetic and social dimensions of performance together, as theorised by Shannon Jackson and James Thompson, for example. The Mill – City of Dreams, a successful and well-received performance, nonetheless shows above all the practical difficulty of this precarious reconciliation.

Notes

1. Alfred Hickling, ‘The Mill: City of Dreams – Review’, Guardian, 4 April 2011, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/apr/04/mill-city-of-dreams-review> [accessed 16 May 2013].

2. Tim Smith and Olive Howarth, Textile Voices: A Century of Mill Life (Bradford: Bradford Museums, Galleries and Heritage, 2006), pp. 8–17.

3. Simon Taylor and Kathryn Gibson, Manningham: Character and Diversity in a Bradford Suburb (Swindon: English Heritage, 2010), p. 91.

4. Interview with Madani Younis, Skype, 28 April 2011.

5. Freedom Studios, ‘The Story of the Company’, Freedom Studios, <http://www.freedomstudios.co.uk/about/mission-values/> [accessed 16 May 2013].

6. Live performance of The Mill – City of Dreams by Freedom Studios, Bradford, 1 April 2011.

7. See Madani Younis, ‘FW: Quote about the Show’, email to James Andrew Wilson, 28 April 2011; Dominic Cavendish, ‘The Mill: City of Dreams, Drummonds Mill, Bradford, Review’, Telegraph, 6 April 2011, <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/8433104/The-Mill-City-of-Dreams-Drummonds-Mill-Bradford-review.html> [accessed 23 June 2013]; Hickling, ‘The Mill: City of Dreams – Review’; Ron Simpson, ‘The Mill – City of Dreams (Bradford)’, Whatsonstage.com, 1 April 2011, <http://www.whatsonstage.com/bradford-theatre/reviews/04-2011/the-mill-city-of-dreams-bradford_9391.html> [accessed 23 June 2013].

8. See pamphlets: Foundation 2000, Disturbances in Manningham: A Community Response: ‘The Voices Must Be Heard!’ (Bradford: Foundation 2000, 1996), p. 7; Programme for a Peaceful City, Bradford: One Year On: Breaking the Silences (Bradford: University of Bradford, 2002), p. 3.

9. Smith and Howarth, Textile Voices, p. 10; Younis, interview.

10. Manningham Masterplan (Bradford: City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council and Yorkshire Forward, 2005), <http://www.manninghammasterplan.co.uk/documents/manningham_mp_final.pdf> [accessed 17 July 2011], pp. 15, 13, 76, 92.

11. Madani Younis and Omar Elerian, script meeting, Bradford, 20 February 2011.

12. Arts Council England, 2012 Games – Our Vision: 2012 and Beyond (2008), <http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/2012_games_ourvision.pdf> [accessed 15 May 2013], p. 2.

13. Ibid.

14. Imove – Yorkshire’s Cultural Programme for London 2012, <http://imoveand.com> [accessed 10 December 2012].

15. Legacy Trust UK, ‘About Legacy Standard’, Legacy Trust UK, <http://www.legacytrustuk.org/info/About_Legacy-Standard/> [accessed 10 December 2012].

16. Arts Council England, Achieving Great Art for Everyone: A Strategic Framework for the Arts (2010), <http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/media/uploads/achieving_great_art_for_everyone.pdf> [accessed 15 May 2013], p. 2.

17. Ibid., p. 7.

18. Ibid., p. 12.

19. Ibid., p. 31.

20. Arts Council England, 2012 Games, p. 12.

21. Arts Council England, Achieving Great Art, p. 2.

22. Shannon Jackson, Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 15.

23. Ibid., p. 16.

24. Ibid., p. 33.

25. James Thompson, Performance Affects: Applied Theatre and the End of Effect (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

26. Ibid., pp. 36, 43, 99–100.

27. Ibid., p. 11.

28. Ibid., p. 125.

29. Nigel J. Thrift, Non-Representational Theory: Space, Politics, Affect (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), p. 36.

30. Deborah Dickinson, ‘Re: Information about the Mill’, email to James Andrew Wilson, 27 June 2011.

31. At the time of writing the official website for The Mill – City of Dreams had several pages with detailed information and media about various aspects of the project. Freedom Studios, The Mill – City of Dreams, <http://www.themill-cityofdreams.com> [accessed 1 October 2012]. Future references are from this site, which has now lapsed. A less comprehensive page on the project can be found at Freedom Studios, Past Projects, <http://www.freedomstudios.co.uk/past-projects/the-mill/> [1 August 2013].

32. Younis, interview.

33. Dickinson, ‘Re: Information about the Mill’.

34. Younis, interview.

35. See: Emma Clayton, ‘Play Brings Old Mill Back to Life’, Telegraph & Argus, 30 March 2011, <http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/news_behind/8941060.Play_brings_old_mill_back_to_life/> [accessed 10 December 2011]; Zoe Clifton, ‘The Mill – City of Dreams’, DigYorkshire.com, 15 March 2011, <http://digyorkshire.com/HighlightDetails.aspx?Article=1159#.UMX-jkIz1yc> [accessed 10 December 2012].

36. Freedom Studios, ‘The Mill – City of Dreams’.

37. Freedom Studios, The Mill – City of Dreams Programme (Bradford: Freedom Studios, 2011).

38. Younis and Elerian, script meeting.

39. Legacy Trust UK, ‘About Legacy Standard’.

40. Omar Elerian and Madani Younis, rehearsal, Bradford, 1 March 2011. I regularly observed rehearsals and meetings that led to the creation of The Mill – City of Dreams between January 2011 and opening night in April 2011. My observations and discussions with cast members, members of the production team and the directors, supplemented by my interview with director Madani Younis, form the basis of my argument in this article.

41. Younis, interview.

42. Arts Council England, Achieving Great Art.

43. Hickling, ‘The Mill: City of Dreams’.

44. Elerian and Younis, rehearsal, 1 March 2011.

45. Jill Bennett, Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma, and Contemporary Art (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), p. 7.

46. Thompson, Performance Affects, p. 131.

47. Younis, interview.

48. Tim Smith, meeting, 21 February 2011.

49. Madani Younis, The Mill – City of Dreams, Unpublished Manuscript, 21 March 2011.

50. In a meeting, Younis told cast members, ‘This isn’t a democracy!’ Madani Younis, rehearsal, Bradford, 14 March 2011.

51. Arts Council England, Achieving Great Art; Legacy Trust UK, ‘About Legacy Standard’.

52. Dickinson, ‘Re: Information about the Mill’.

53. ‘Drummond Mill Plans Take a Step Forward’, Telegraph and Argus, 20 April 2012, <http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/local/localbrad/9660187.Drummond_Mill_complex_plans_take_a_step_forward/> [accessed 17 May 2013].

54. Younis, interview.

55. Younis, interview.

56. Jill Bennett, Empathic Vision, p. 7.

57. Many audience members echoed this sentiment as they described their own affective experiences of the performance: ‘I loved it and found it really thought provoking, waking up still thinking about it […]. You have really used the space so well, and yes it does hit all the senses – almost without you realising it at the time!’; ‘I loved the smells, the paint peeling walls, the mechanised sounds of industry, labour and progress.’; ‘I’d just like to say, your production was the first time in 17 years I felt proud to be a Bradfordian’, (Anonymous emails cited in Younis, ‘FW: Quote about the Show’).

58. Jan Cohen-Cruz, Engaging Performance: Theatre as Call and Response (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 9.