Interview with Sally Roberts Jones

Rebecca interviewed Sally Roberts Jones this week, about her memories of the Commonwealth Poetry Conference, which took place in Cardiff in 1965 as part of the Commonwealth Festival.  Poets and writers that attended the conference included Clive James and Les Murray of Australia, Alexander Trocchi, Brian Patten, Adrian Henri and George Macbeth. 

The Conference included a happening organised by Tom Hudson at Jackson Hall in Cardiff called 'Assembly Line' - this was possibly the first happening to take place in Wales, and among to participants was the American musician and composer Philip Corner.  We would love to hear from anyone who remembers the poetry conference or took part in 'Assembly Line' - email mail@performance-wales.org

Rebecca and Heike would like to thank Sally Roberts Jones for her sharing her time and memories with us.

Interview with Wyndham Heycock - Barry Summer School

Heike and Rebecca met Wyndham Heycock, co-director of Barry Summer School with the artist Leslie Moore, from 1962-1973. It was during this period that the school reached its peak, attracting artists and musicians from across the world to teach at Barry, including George Brecht, John Epstein, Roland Miller, Terry Setch, Harry Thubron, Ernest Zobole and jazz musicians including Larry Adler. We'd like to thank Wyndham Heycock, and his wife Sally, for their help with the project.

The photo below is of a group of students listening to Tom Hudson speak at the Summer School around 1965 (click on the photo to enlarge it); if you can identify any of the people in the picture, or you attended any of the art or music courses during the 1960s and early 1970s - please email us at mail@performance-wales.org

Interviews with Joan Baker and Anne Gingell

Rebecca met with Joan Baker and Anne Gingell today, to hear their memories of Cardiff College of Art from the 1960s and 1970s. 

Joan Baker studied art at Cardiff, before going on to teach at other colleges including Bath.  She returned to Cardiff and taught there for 38 years, working closely with Tom Hudson.

Anne Gingell moved to Cardiff in 1966 when her husband, John, took up a teaching post at the college. John Gingell was very interested in performance, and his ‘Alternative Studies’ course at the college laid the foundations for the establishment of the Third Area, later to become the Space Workshop.

We are still looking for former students from the college. If you took part in performances with John Gingell, or were one of the students experimenting with performance and sound in the early 1960s (or earlier!) then we would love to hear from you.

Thanks to Joan Baker and Anne Gingell for their support for the project.

National Arts Education Archive - Tom Hudson

Heike and Rebecca spent two days at the National Arts Education Archive at Bretton Hall, in Yorkshire. Bretton Hall used to be part of the University of Leeds, specialising in music, art, drama and teacher training courses in the main. It's been closed for a few years now, and the campus is an eerie place; it looks like a normal university, but all signs of life have disappeared.
We were there to look through the Tom Hudson collection. Hudson was an artist, but is better known as an art educator. He was appointed as head of Cardiff College of Art in 1964, and introduced courses that emphasised the creative process, and innovative ways of approaching art. It was during his time in charge that the ‘Third Space’ for performance art or time-based art was established.

The collection contained lots of exciting finds, including colour slides of performances, and films of colour experiments, in which students were dressed and painted in greens and purples, then filmed walking through Cardiff. We hope to be able to make some of this available in the future on our database.

There has been some uncertainty over the future of the archive. Bretton Hall is now being turned into a luxury hotel and conference centre. Fortunately, several institutions have agreed to jointly run the archive, and the collection will remain intact.