Down at the Bamboo Club an ambitious programme of activity exploring aspects of Bristol's social and political histories using devices such as irony, oration and filmic re-creation. Co-ordinated by Picture This and with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Bristol Visual Arts Consortium, the project uses re-enactments to enable participants to explore subjects such as community relations, the legacy of slave trading on the city's economy and communities, histories of division and solidarity, and the heritage of their own roles in the city today.
Through Down at the Bamboo Club Picture This will work with invited artists:Barby Asante, Mark Wilsher and Mandy McIntosh to devise and deliver participatory projects involving moving image and re-enactment through participatory workshops and other community events. Re-enactments offer sensitive ways to link to diverse communities and gain newly produced material. Re-enactment is a means of expression that has sympathies with oral traditions of storytelling. It has the potential to reconcile the dynamics of contemporary and historical perspectives of slavery and to respond to the specific site, place and context of Bristol.