Elsa James
A Place With A Heart:
A Place To Grow
Essex-based artist and activist Elsa James hosts Art Club, an intergenerational after-school club for Barking and Dagenham-based foster carers and children in care.
Art Club has been meeting regularly since autumn 2020 to spring 2021 through a series of online, in-person and postal sessions, to engage with the identity of place, and explore what makes people feel at home.
Together, the group has been creatively examining under-explored local narratives, customs, and histories to generate new memories and legacies for the future.
Collage artworks exploring local history made by young people and families during Art Club sessions with Elsa James, using materials from Barking and Dagenham Archives, 2020-21, The White House as part of New Town Culture
Through this collaboration, Elsa James' Art Club has culminated in a new artwork for The White House, 'A Place With A Heart: A Place To Grow'; a permanent plaque installed in the White House foyer, welcoming all visitors. The work was installed as past of the Becontree Estate’s 2021 centenary programme.
Becontree Estate 1921 / Getty Images
About Elsa James
Elsa James is an artist and activist living in Essex since 1999. Her work intervenes in the overlapping discourses of race, gender, diaspora and belonging. Her black British identity ignites her interdisciplinary and research-based practice, located within the fields of contemporary performance, text-based art, socio-political and socially engaged art; occasionally dabbling with drawing and painting.
Solo works employ recollection and the archives to examine ideas surrounding regionality of race and black subjectivity. Recent works Forgotten Black Essex (2018) and Black Girl Essex, Here We Come, Look We Here (2019) explore the historical, temporal and spatial dimensions of what it means to be black in Essex; England's most misunderstood, and, homogeneously white county. Her social practice includes advocating for the inclusion of marginalised voices and communities in the arts sector; New Ways of Seeing, Making and Telling (2018), a visual provocation and live debate, challenged how the art sector can 'genuinely' address barriers to participation and involvement in the arts for Black, Asian and other minority communities.
Recent exhibitions and projects include WE STAND WITH YOU (Firstsite, Colchester, 2020); Policy No. 1 Disrupt The Existing Narratives (Beecroft Art Gallery, Essex, 2020); Black Girl Essex, Here We Come, Look Me Here (Firstsite, Colchester, 2019/20); Circle of Blackness (Furtherfield Gallery, London, 2019); Love in Social Practice (Going Places Festival, Cubitt and All Change, London, 2019); Forgotten Black Essex, (Metal Southend, Essex, 2018).
James is a selected artist for Syllabus VI (2020-21), a national alternative learning programme delivered by Wysing Arts Centre, Eastside Projects, Iniva, Spike Island and Studio Voltaire. Her work was published in IN OTHER WORDS commissioned by Metal Peterborough in partnership with the Live Art Development Agency (2020) and a self-portrait included for the 30th-Anniversary Commemorative Tea Towel for Focal Point Gallery (2020). She has been selected co-curator for the Opening Weekend Programme for Estuary Festival (2021) led by Metal Southend and Cement Fields.
Forgotten Black Essex (2018) St Mary's Little Parndon Church, Harlow, Essex
Photo: Amaal Said
New Ways of Seeing Making and Telling (2018), Site Gallery, Sheffield
Photo: Jules Lister
Black Girl Essex: Here We Come, Look We Here (2019), Tilbury Docks, Essex. Film still: Andy Delaney
Elsa James: A Place With A Heart: A Place To Grow is commissioned by The White House as part of New Town Culture, a programme of artistic and cultural activity taking place in adult and children’s social care and curated by the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. A Place With A Heart: A Place To Grow forms part of a broader programme that marks the centenary of the Becontree estate in 2021. This commission is funded by the GLA’s Young Londoners Fund, the MOPAC Violence Reduction Unit, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
About New Town Culture
New Town Culture is a programme of artistic and cultural activity taking place in adult and children’s social care across the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. We work with artists, social care staff and carers to develop creative ways to support systemic change in social care and to unlock the value of art and culture for all communities. New Town Culture celebrates the incredible stories, knowledge and skills of the residents of Barking and Dagenham through workshops, clubs, exhibitions, live performances and training for the staff and users of social care services.
This ambitious project was piloted with the support of a Cultural Impact Award for the London Borough of Culture, a Mayor of London initiative, and is now extending its scope through further funding from the Young Londoners Fund, the GLA and the MOPAC Violence Reduction Unit.