Everywhere Playground (2024, ongoing)

Everywhere Playground was a week long experimental workshop for young people conceived for the Somerset House Future Artists Programme in 2024. It remains as a flexible model for workshop creation.

Inspired by Dada; by the 1960s ‘Happenings’ involving artists such as Allan Kaprow, Robert Whitman and Carolee Schneemann; by the Japanese collectives Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop) and Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai (Gutai Art Association); by the interdisciplinary experiments of Black Mountain College; by the convergence of dance and visual art at the Judson Dance Theater in New York; by the fluxus events of artists such as Yoko Ono and Ben Patterson; and by the experiences of failure and discovery that come with being an artist, Everywhere Playground was a five day experimental, educational and open-ended proposal for creative questioning and exploration.

As a group, participants worked towards the creation of their own extended period experimentation in which they played with the clashing and coming together of different materials and practices to explore the possibilities of improvisation, composition and collage. In the lead up to this, we re-interpreted different forms of free, experimental making – such as collage, event scores, automatic drawing free-writing, performance “happenings” and improvised sound and music. To give context to each day, we learned a little about what gave rise to the various art movements, moments and collectives which inform our actions. The week held a spirit of play and randomness, with exact activities steered by the group (or picked from a hat) but included things like creating music with everyday objects, devising instructions for interaction with the building, or finding ways to draw sounds.

‘A Happening is an assemblage of events performed or perceived in more than one time and place…A Happening, unlike a stage play, may occur at a supermarket, driving along a highway, under a pile of rags, and in a friend’s kitchen, either at once or sequentially. If sequentially, time may extend to more than a year. The Happening is performed according to plan but without rehearsal, audience, or repetition. It is art but seems closer to life.’ - Allan Kaprow

The goal was not to look solely to the past, but to move this material into a contemporary context and make a space for spontaneity and playfulness free from pressure and with freedom to fail. At the beginning of the week the group decided if they would like to share any of the resulting experiments informally to friends and family. This was entirely optional, the focus was on creating a space where participants can create without the pressure of a final presentation.