Peoples Republic of South Devon

one.c

August 11th, 2008

It’s summer, so we thought we’d get our arts in gear and have a whole summer arts thing going on on the People’s Republic of South Devon. Why? Well, because art and culture go together like “Bam-a-lam-a-lam-a, shoo bop de bop de bop” as Freud once said.

And it may well whet your whistle for the forthcoming Devon Artist Network events and the Totnes Festival, to name but two (now all we need to do is whisper ‘cultural tourism’ and see if anyone hears us).

Last summer one.c, plus others had the audacious idea of having a performance arts event running through Plymouth. Lee Morgan caught up with Kath Wynne and Pete Davis to find out what pushes the artist group one.c

Play can be a lot of hard work, according to one.c, the group behind last summer’s multi-faceted artistic festival. The event, which lasted just over a day, took two years in the making and involved more than 20 artists at six venues throughout Plymouth, including Smeaton’s Tower, the Guildhall and Dingles.

And that’s what one.c is all about – putting live art in front of a whole new audience.
‘On the day itself you were able to wander about and interact,’ says Kath Wynne, one of the one.c team. ‘You could see kids being more interested in art.’

The group ‘takes art out of the art institution, into the public eye and reach’, and PL:ay is just one of the events they’ve been involved with, which include, for example, Dada+Fluxus (performance art bouts in a boxing ring in South Brent); germination at Broomhill as part of Devon Art Works, and the ongoing myhometwin, a project which intends to twin all the contents of an everyday home.

‘What excites us is the idea,’ says Pete Davies, the other regular fixture of the wide and loose affiliation – or, as Pete prefers, wide umbrella – that is one.c.

‘If you want something to happen, you have to do it yourself,’ he says.

That DIY attitude is all to do with ‘letting it happen and taking responsibility for it happening, and supporting people who get up and do’.

‘When people talk about cultural tourism, they forget that Bristol has had 20 years of DIY activism,’ say Kath.

‘There’s an expectation of immediacy, but it won’t work overnight, and takes hard work and commitment.’

And one.c aims to act as a catalyst to the increasing artistic activism.

‘There’s such diversity in the south west and there’s so much going on,’ says Pete.

The birth of one.c was in a spare room in Kath and Pete’s flat, where they built an idea of piecing people together. This was in August 2005. The couple had worked together for 12 years, through qualifications at Dartington and an ongoing career as a photographer.

Kath now has a perfect view of the wider arts arena as the Plymouth arts officer and Pete is stretching his photography into zines, and looking towards the possibility of publishing books.

‘one.c likes books,’ says Kath, and they are possibly the extension of the idea of art that’s tangible, easily disseminated and universal.

‘We want to take art out of the art institution into the public eye and reach people,’ she says.

Certainly they curate work which does that, and they combine it with the zine and the website, which is the group’s ongoing newsletter-style archive.

There’s an enthusiasm to one.c that moulds with their appealing turn of phrase (they want to ‘move arts out of arts cliques’), and is backed up by events they manage. And no matter how much dedicated hard work one.c’s grassroots DIY arts activism takes, it seems a helluva a lot of fun.

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Entry Filed under: Arts