Jacky Puzey

Shade the Tour
Jacky Puzey with Baljinder Bhopal, Liz Lambert, Hilary Ramsden and Folake Shoga
with thanks to Jude English, Ruth Jacobs, Lin Quilty and D A Tidy

Here is a movie of the Shade Tour at the Easton Arts Trail 2008

Easton Arts Trail, Saturday 21 June 2008
The tour began at Easton Community Centre in the triangle garden…….visas were issued, mint tea was shared, suits were paraded, and the history of the passport began to be interrogated….

For this project, Shade became a touring performance piece around Easton, starting at Easton Community Centre, then travelling along the cycle path, and off to Roud’s Fabrics, Eastside Roots garden centre and Thali Café. Three performers, the Hostess, the Activist and the Dandy, wearing immaculately tailored suits, carrying umbrellas, led a group of people to different locations, working with poets, historians from Living Easton, ecologists from Transitions Easton, and our audience to make a new kind of collaborative tour.

We explored territory, influence, and how to make positive connections across places and communities, through dress, land, gardening, culture and shared histories; coming together to create a space for conversation and food, thinking about public identities and shared influences in a multicultural space. We invited ‘tourists’ to join us, to share their thoughts, contribute their recipes and growing tips, to tour together through the fabric of Easton, from dress shops to local growing centres, food cultures to public space….would they join us and manage to secure one of only 20 visas for the full tour, a guest in a new space? or would they migrate without passport, contesting borders and community allegiances as they passed, creating new collaborations as visas were renegotiated during the tour.

with thanks to everyone who helped, sewed, fed and supported this project, including Mike from Living Easton, Transitions Easton, Roud Fabrics and The Thali Cafe, and all our helpers on the tour.
funded by Easton Arts Trail 2008 and Bath Spa University School of Art and Design 2008