A show for SPID Theatre telling the story of Artistic Director Helena Thompson’s fight for a renewed community vision, and the eventual triumph of art and solidarity. The show had played for years in many other versions. As the ‘remount director’ I installed it in its final home, the beautifully refurbished Community Rooms where it all began.
Twenty years ago I directed “Open House ” a site-specific (fantastic) new play by Helena Thompson, in the mouldy and dilapidated community rooms of the Kensal House estate in Ladbroke Grove.
The kids from the estate banged on the doors and asked what we were doing, so we started drama classes for the little ones and I began to direct immersive new plays by Helena with the teenagers, on site.
The estate had been designed as a ground-breaking urban village by Maxwell Fry and Elizabeth Denby in the 1930s, and the community rooms were at the heart of the vision. Seventy years later, that dream was once again flickering to life. We worked in cold and damp, raised money project by project, revelled in the talent and energy of the young people, and celebrated each new storage heater, repaired toilet and blackout blind. But these were just sticking plasters.
How had the space come to this sorry state? Denby retired, Kensal House passed into council hands after the second world war and the vision faded away. All the love, inspiration, and belief in solidarity and community living, was forgotten. The rooms were – literally – left to rot, just as the council (Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea) left the flats above to decay, and left the people of Grenfell Tower vulnerable to catastrophe.
In the years since we started the youth theatre Helena has worked ceaselessly to create a community hub, build a thriving arts company that puts participants on estates at the heart of everything they do, and finally, restore the community rooms and unite with residents to force the council to restore the rest of the estate too. The black mould, leaks and floods which eroded residents’ physical and mental health will soon be things of the past.
Artivist’s Handbook told the story of her personal struggle to achieve the historic settlement with the council – and put a lift in a Grade 2* listed building with National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England support! – and showcases the voices of the local residents and SPID participants who championed the work and fought back against attempts to divide and turn the community against each other.
As for me, one thing stands out. I saw a previous version of this show called ‘Floods, Fire & Sunshine’ at Riverside Studios in June 2024. At the end, young people involved with SPID performed their own poetry – one of them looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. But he knew me. He’d grown up in Kensal House and he remembered that I had worked with his older sister nearly 20 years earlier through our ‘Far Far Away’ programme. He remembered a film we’d made in which she’d been stuffed into a wheely bin. Above all, he remembered being too young to join us, and how desperately he wanted to be a part of it.
And here he was, onstage, a brilliant artist, part of a company – a movement – that was making real change in the world. Bravo to him, bravo to Helena Thompson, and bravo to SPID and all who fight for arts and community.