My time at The Black-E is one I will never forget. I first arrived at the Community Arts Charity to volunteer on their extensive archive – chronologising the paper archive and tabulating events in an Excel database and helping to create a taxonomy from the paper archive. At this time I was grateful for the opportunity to do something useful again after months of miserable unemployment and failed attempts at finding a job after being laid off a library job that I was comfortable in.
It wasn’t long before funding came in for The Black-E’s archive to hire a part time Archive Assistant and I was lucky enough that I was asked to take on the role. It was interesting work, reading all the stories starting from the late 1960s of the games, events, the highs and lows of the developing building, as well as editing and cleaning photographs in Photoshop to upload to archive website. One of my proudest achievements was when I was able to retrieve a 16mm film negative The Black-E had created that had been lost decades earlier. It took a lot of research, emails, phone calls and creative thinking to track down the negatives to storage in London. I was able to find a company who could transfer the 16mm to DVD so that the film could be shown at The Black-E and be included in the archive.
At The Black-E no-one has just one role, everyone works on all aspects of the project, and plays together in the weekly ‘staff games’.
After the Director’s Assistant left I was asked if I wanted to take on the role as well as continuing to work on the archive. The country was still in recession and I had lost all hope of finding a job, so I accepted the offer with gratitude. I had no idea what I had taken on. Yes I did the usual work of a Director’s Personal Assistant – writing funding applications, diary management, report writing, reception duties, PR and marketing as well as minute taking. But, I also took on Volunteer recruitment/management, which led to getting to meet and working with a whole range of people from drama students, former ‘Blackie kids’, Spanish students learning English to learning disabled people looking to gain experience in the workplace. Due to lack of resources I also took on event planning. The project I took the lead on was Casus Circus’ visit. They performed their aerial show Knee Deep as well as leading workshops for professionals, local young people, and taking part in The Black-E’s weekly Staff Games. I organised their travel and accommodation as well writing the press release, working with a marketing company to advertise the performances, running the day to day of event organisation in the theatre. I also filmed the performances for the archive. Read more about the Casus visit to The Black-E here
The unique aspect of The Black-E is it’s Creative and Co-Operative Games. These games were created mainly by Bill Harpe, the charity’s Director and designed to offer an alternative way of playing from the traditional competitive games where players are pitted against each other and there are winners and losers. In creative games, players use their imagination to create works usually based on a theme. In c0-operative games players work together to achieve an outcome or to simply enjoy the act of playing. The Games have been multi disciplinary – music, movement, drama, writing, drawing and painting, photography, filming, craft etc.
During my time at The Black-E the Games where used in the weekly Staff Games whereby staff, volunteers, visiting artists and anyone else who was around would participate in creative thinking, problem solving, team building games. The games encouraged diversity and inclusion, collaboration, learning about each other, training, as well as exploring ideas for the Youth Arts Programme and Cultural Programme, health and wellbeing, right brain/left brain, social issues, current events, and self development . More about Games at The Black-E can be found on their online archive
A lot of the Cultural Programme was based around themes that pulled all the different disciplines together. One theme I remember being particularly fun was the ’43 Birthday Game’ to celebrate The Black-E’s anniversary. Bill believed that all numbers are important and rather than making a big celebration of round numbers like 40 or 45 we should celebrate the ones in between such as 43. People were invited to create a 43 artwork in any media they liked and the finished works were displayed in an exhibition in the Gallery. I played a game with Company of Friends, who were a drama group of adults with learning disabilities. We used sticky notes to stick on each other on our skin, finding enough places to ensure we used 43 sticky notes. Photographer and friend of The Black-E Paul Robinson then took photographs of the results.
I got to not only take part in games but also lead workshops for creative activities. Every Chinese New Year, The Black-E put on a celebration with the local Chinese community that included Tai Chi demonstrations, Lion Dance, art exhibitions, and workshops for the public. I led the Year of The Snake young people’s art workshop. Children were invited to draw the word snake in the shape of snakes. We ran this workshop for both the public and for the Youth Arts Playscheme and displayed the works in the Gallery.
I also a ran badge making workshop for International Women’s Day, where young people and adults came to learn how to make a badge with a design promoting women’s rights. Whilst making the badge I explained to them the meaning of the day and the gave them information where they could find more resources.
As part of the Youth Arts Programme, a group of young people chose to complete the Arts Council’s Bronze Arts Award. I was chosen as one of the people who mentored a young person in the programme. I helped a young artist research a historical artist she was influenced by and come up with ideas for her project.
Bill and The Black-E published a number of books over the years on games, community art and the benefits for health and wellbeing as well as a book with Feminist Artist Judy Chicago, which I had the privilege of working on. I wrote a separate blog post here on the experience. There is so much more I could write about from my time at The Black-E but I’ll save that for another day. If you want to find out more about The Black-E visit their website here.
words by Amanda Jones, photography by Paul Robinson
Amanda Jones Art and Design 
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