The Way We Live Now: A Gathering

In the face of ongoing change and disorientation, what is it to (re)imagine spaces for collective creative action? How do we, as creative workers, gather in ways that resist nostalgia, acknowledge the significance and value of all the people who’ve gone before us, and activate the progressive potential of the traces of the past in the present? Colleagues from Arts University Plymouth, University of Plymouth, The Box and the City are invited to gather and discuss projects that they’re working on that speak to the themes of Jill Craigie’s groundbreaking film The Way We Live (1946, https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-way-we-live-1946-online ;

In April 2023, Joanne Dorothea-Smith, Sef Penrose and Angela Piccini invited 50 artists, academics, council workers, and people from cultural and community organisations to gather at Plymouth Arts Cinema to consider the legacy of The Way We Live. Building on work that many of the participants had developed previously, we devised and discussed possible creative and co-produced responses to help inform The Box’s plans for the 80th anniversary of the film (​The Way We Live Now Resources Report (April 2023)​

The Way We Live speaks to how cities work – how planning works – and how futures are made. It enacts the individual and the collective, the local and the national, the micro and macro. In The Way We Live, people opt into the construction and maintenance of civic society and decision-making even while they are on the edge of it. A key scene involves the Reconstruction Committee of the City Council, which met in what is now The Box, following bomb damage to the original council buildings. Mayor Mason, who steered the plan through, is flanked by Colin Campbell, the Town Clerk who saw the city through the war. Clifford Tozer speaks for the Plan, Isaac Foot defends its vision. “Lido” Bill Miller - Plymouth’s first Black councillor (and would-be mayor, had he not determined to keep hold of his housing brief in the early post-war years) can be seen in the back row. We also see Jacquetta Marshall, Plymouth’s first female mayor, and a pioneer in healthcare in the city. This connection between the spaces of culture and the spaces of civic governance continues to resonate in Plymouth.The Box has now commissioned an exhibition - scheduled to open autumn 2026 - that responds to The Way We Live and they are exploring the potential for a constellation of projects associated with it.

• To share your work with other researchers and to respect other researchers’ ideas – to be the change we want to see
• To be generous and critical and to listen actively
• To accept that this will not be perfect and to acknowledge that the work may be difficult, contested and emotionally charged
• To identify potential funding opportunities across the universities and at The Box
• To join conversations about the future of the city
• To occupy university spaces as civic spaces
• To support the realisation of new and in-progress projects that could be presented as part of the broader engagement strategy of The Box’s exhibition
• To support AUP and UoP artist-scholars gain broader visibility by building city-wide and national audiences for this work
• To insist on the value of university research (and researchers) in the economic and cultural life of the city

• We will connect our projects to the themes of the film
• We will identity new projects
• We will explore opportunities for working together
• We will identify possible funding opportunities, including in-kind funding in the form of our research time
• We will work out a clear process for how The Box and universities could support this work to happen

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Host or Publisher University of Plymouth Fine Art