Workers' Playtime
Workers’ Playtime takes its name from an old BBC radio variety programme that was broadcast three times a week from different factory canteens across Britain. The programme was originally intended as a morale booster for industrial labourers during World War II, but proved so popular that it continued until 1964.
The project explores the performativity and creativity of working class people, demonstrated in the way they express themselves during their leisure time. For many manual, clerical and service sector workers, individual personality is constrained during working hours by the pressure to conform to an established system of productivity or service. What people choose to do and the clothes they wear during their time off is the greatest manifestation of character, and it is the performative nature of self-expression that I’m concerned with capturing in this series. Music and dance have long been closely connected to work and industry, from the music halls of Victorian Britain to the dance halls and working men’s clubs of the 20th century. As workers leisure time increased over the decades, so too did their propensity to express themselves with ever increasing flare and imagination.
The work is inspired by my Father, a former mineworker who moonlighted as an Elvis Presley tribute act on the working men’s club circuit throughout my childhood. It always struck me that many of his fellow entertainers in these clubs worked manual day jobs. They were using their talents for performance and showmanship to make an extra income in the evenings and at weekends. The idea of the transformation of these men and women out of their workaday clothes and into neatly pressed costumes for the stage has always fascinated me.
This is an ongoing project.
