The Romford Arts Festival

he NO Collective opened the Romford Arts Festival 2013 with a special ‘fact- checking tour guide’ performance leading audiences from The Brentwood Road Gallery to the launch party in central Romford:



“Moving on from the Lupa ‘Culture Capital of Romford’ series, NO continue to explore the identity of this micro-culture with an investigation to the history and traditions of the market town.
Working in collaboration with the marketing prospect of the cultural resonance of the town, the culture crawl incorporates the findings of the Lupa investigation with a new avenue of historical value and its relevance within culture, and within, specifically, this town.”

Starting at the gallery with an informal briefing on the ‘crawl’ NO took the local art world to familiar places inviting them to listen to a mix of truths about the history of the town. (It was important that the audience is a local community as they will NOT take facts given to them at face value). The interest in mixing truths investigates the learned and supposed culture though history- Is factual evidence and social representations of events enough to tell us about the identity of place or does it only inform the elitism of knowledge?”

The performance also acted as a stream to empower the participants of the tour and challenge the perceptions of power within the structure.

We were also please to curate and place work in:
POST MARCH at My Place , also taking place as part of the festival.

MyPlace’ based in Harold Hill is for the first time exhibiting the work from artists and designers of ‘The Local Studio’, Petersfield Avenue.A fantastic carbon neutral space, providing a range of facilities. MyPlace offers classes and workshops for the community providing plenty of scope to show the growing talent of these Contemporary artists residing within Havering. The show, named POST MARCH aims to deliver a dynamic exhibition concentrating on contemporary new works made at The Local Studio. Using varying disciplines, the exhibition aims to show the dynamic wealth of talent and community spirit of the locale.




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