Steels & Skin
From the collection of
Steels & Skin
Handheld footage of a music troupe in Tower Hamlets playing music, dancing, telling stories, and teaching children how to play instruments.
In this video from the Basement Project, a music troupe featuring steel pan players, percussionists, brass section, singers, and dancers takes a group of East End children through a crash course in how to play instruments, followed by some live tunes. The band leader tells stories from Nigeria and Trinidad, and the band plays Nigerian and Caribbean songs in accompaniment. All this activity takes place in what appears to be the ruined foundations of a former building, with passers by watching the band from street level and an audience perched on a crumbling wall. The band performs under a banner bearing the demand "New Amenity Open Space for Tower Hamlets". This event and banner allude to the community-led drive in the 1970s for investment in local arts and culture in the borough, which resulted in the Tower Hamlets Arts Project, the E1 Festival, and the Basement Project. In parts of the video, the filmmaker (Maggie Pinhorn) hands the camera over to the kids to capture the event themselves, in the spirit of the community filmmaking ethos of the Basement Project, which results in new viewpoints on the action and some slightly sweary content!
This video is from the London Community Video Archive, a member of the London's Screen Archives Network.
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The Basement Project
A founder member of The Basement Project, Maggie Pinhorn has a long history of involvement and innovation in community filmmaking in East London
Maggie Pinhorn started her career in the mainstream film industry in the 1960s, but by the early 1970s, dissatisfied with it, she became an early pioneer of using film and video making in the community. The first film she made with a mixed group of young people in Tower Hamlets - Tunde's Film - was a seminal film of the period. The process of making the film became the basis of Maggie setting up The Basement Project, which went on to become the Basement Community Arts project.
At that time, Maggie had no knowledge of anybody else working with community projects to make film, so had no real point of reference. As she explains, "of course there were plenty of independent filmmakers going out and making all sorts of films in all sorts of ways, but because I was actually working with this group and getting them to help direct the film, and edit the film, be part of the film, definitely all the way it was very much their film - with me, yes, in charge of making sure it happened - but they had ownership of it."
At the heart of her work, Maggie believes in giving people from all backgrounds opportunities. "Ultimately," she says, "building strength in communities is critical, and what’s important is that those communities do have a serious opportunity to express what they think and feel."
20 videos in this collection
1
2
The Basement Project: Keeping Cool
3
The Basement Project: Girls
4
Covent Garden Street Fair: Part One
5
Covent Garden Street Fair: Part Two
6
Election '74: Part One
7
Election '74: Part Two
8
Election '74: Part Three
9
The Basement Project: TFB Rehearsal
10
Legal Aid in Tower Hamlets
11
E1 Festival 1975
12
Steels & Skin
13
6th E1 Festival
14
Basement Project: Masks/Self-Portraits
15
Basement Interview: Liz & Pauline
16
Basement Project: Gospel Singing
17
Basement Project: Council Housing Interview
18
Tower Hamlets Arts Project Roadshow: Part One
19
Tower Hamlets Arts Project Roadshow: Part Two
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