Down at the Bamboo Club
2008-2020 Picture This Atelier, Bristol, UK

Down at the Bamboo Club project explores legacy through participation, historic sites and events with 3 commissions, an exhibition and a publication.

Down at The Bamboo Club: Film, participation and re-enactment was developed by Harold Offeh for Picture This as a response to national and city wide projects marking the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery act.

Picture This was keen to develop participatory projects involving re-enactment through workshops and 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.

Through a period of research and development Picture This invited artist Harold Offeh to start conversations with three organisations in the city with links to sites and moments in the city's history of slavery, abolitionism and community relationships - The Georgian House, Wesley's New Room and the Bristol Black Archives Partnership.

These conversations developed into a brief to three commissioned artists (Barby Asante, Mandy McIntosh and Mark Wilsher) to produce new film and video works with communities and partner sites.

Following the commissions Picture This curated an exhibition bringing together the three new works with existing film and video pieces which share ideas of legacy, re-enactment and community.

- Documents

Down at the Bamboo Club exhibition guide (6.04 MB)