[Applause]

Bolanle Tajudeen: Thank you for such a lovely introduction. And Dan, thank you for this invitation to Bristol Legacy Foundation. Does everyone understand the context of the exhibition and the work? Just want to make sure, so okay, we're all on the same page. Great.

So, Dan and Cleo, both of you grew up close to heritage objects now seen as controversial. Dan, when did you realise the significance of the Blackboy Clock in Stroud and decide to campaign for its removal?

Dan Guthrie: So yeah, I grew up in Stroud. I don't know - I'm assuming people know where Stroud is, if not, it's like an hour's drive away from here. My mum's family moved there from Jamaica as part of the Windrush migration in the 60s. My mum grew up there with her sisters, with her brothers, with her cousins. And I moved to Stroud when I was three. Went to primary school there, went to secondary school there. It was only when I left it and came back at the start of the pandemic that I really noticed it was there. I sort of passed it every day on the way to school. My actual primary school is next door to the Blackboy Clock. In fact, the building that it's on used to be a former school, and through a series of educational mergers and re-namings, my primary school was originally what came to be known as the Blackboy school. And yeah, my route to secondary school I walked past it every day. But it was when I moved back I was going on a lockdown walk, because that's what we were doing in lockdown, you know, shaved my head, baked my bread, going for a walk.

[Laughter]

DG: And I noticed it, and my first thought was, like, what? What is this, like how has this been here this whole time? I sent it, I took a photo, and I sent it to one of my friends who went to primary school with and was like, “Do you remember this being here?” And he was like, “I don't think I do.” And that was such, it's such a weird moment, like, it's obviously had been there the whole time, but I only clocked it (to excuse the terrible pun) when I moved back, and I sort of there was a little plaque by it, sort of at street level that was, like this clock was restored in 2004 by someone, and it just sort of ended there, like there was no context, there was no history. And I went about researching it, yeah. So I guess, yeah, the first time I truly noticed it was there was March 2020 but it had been a presence for my life for so long. It was kind of like I surely must have noticed that at some point, if not consciously, like unconsciously, you know, like there's so much public statue statuary about that we walk past every day, that you kind of register it to some level. But, yeah.

BT: Do you think that the kind of tension that was happening in society at the time, like racial tensions, do you think you were more sensitive to that, to seeing it, or do you think it was just, even if BLM wasn't having its uprising at that time, and you had gone back to Stroud for maybe the weekend, you may have noticed it?

DG: I don't, I don't think, I think it sort of took it almost. I don't think necessarily BLM was the thing that made me notice it, it was more the fact that my eyes just drifted up at the right moment. Like, I think, honestly, if I hadn't have noticed it in June 2020, before June 2020, I might not have noticed it was there then, like, it just, it was so innocuous, the way that it was. I mean, this, this video (Empty Alcove) is so the clock is very much on display for the video. We've removed it as part of the work, but it is at the top of, like a two-story building, like it's not at that eye level as you walk past it. It literally took me, just like drifting up to have a look.

BT: So it could be argued that maybe even that the kind of reflection, or the space and the mental space that the pandemic, the fact that we're in a period of so much silence as well, just coming into oneself, maybe that was…

DG: Yeah, yeah. I think because I was walking, you know, because obviously, all the times I walked past it, I was walking to go somewhere, I was never walking just for the sake of walking. And I think that's what allowed me to notice it, really. But it's funny that you say that, I noticed it, and I wrote to the local council in June 2020, and they put out like a very diplomatically worded statement that says we're looking into these representations. But I didn't want to start a campaign in that moment like I'd seen everything that had been going on in Bristol. And obviously, you know, Colston was a story that was very much ongoing, and had that moment in June 2020, but all those campaigns, all that research leading up to it, I just didn't have that knowledge. And I felt that if I wanted to go out and talk about this, I needed to do my research first. I needed to be on that ground where I was, like, if you try and challenge me about this, I have the information, I have the knowledge that I can share to make this a discussion, rather than us, just like, arguing over something that no one really knows anything about.

BT: And you’ve presented the information quite clearly and balanced on your . And Cleo, what was the moment of realisation regarding Edward Colston's legacy, including the statue and the street names in Bristol, and how did it influence your perspective on these commemorations.

Cleo Lake: Yeah, it's quite it's quite an interesting one for me, because from the age of about five, I would walk from my home in Easton with my mum and my sister, and in those days it was to go from Easton to Gloucester Road, which is was then, as is now, one of the longest independent streets/roads in the UK, independent shops, but it's also somewhere where you can go and thrift. We would say thrift now.

[Laughter]

CL: Back then, it was going to the second hand shops, and it was embarrassing for us as kids. We didn't like going. It was reluctant. Maybe there are a few treats on the way, but the point was, my mum was going there to have a look at the second-hand shops. So walking up Cheltenham road, we would go past this big building. From the age of about five, I would say to my mum, what is this building? And she would say, Well, it's a girl’s school. It's Colston girls. And I said, Well, I'm going to go there when I'm old enough. And every single time we took that walk, I would say that to her, and she would sort of laugh it off, not in connection to Colston, but just the idea that it's a fee paying school and whatever else, and a five-year-old telling you you're going to go to that school. So that was in my mind from a young age. For whatever reason, maybe it's fate. I just wanted to go there. Luckily, I was able to go there with an assisted place. So go through your school career. Of course, I was reasonably aware of my history as an African heritage person of African Jamaican descent, through both my, through education from my mum and my father, but going to school, which was a challenging experience for many different reasons, but on the whole, I enjoyed school, but every first Friday in November, we would go to the cathedral. So for us as students, it was like, well, it's half day off school.

[Laughter]

CL: You have to wear a stupid hat with a badge, very embarrassing. Going from Easton to town looking really ridiculous in your school uniform, faffing about, looking for a bronze chrysanthemum, always a panic, because that was Colston's favourite flower. So your bronze chrysanthemum, your hat, your half day at school, you go to the cathedral, you sing the Te Deum, a hymn which actually most of us enjoyed singing for whatever reason. You listen to someone read out the will of Colston about how he left some money and that was used to found our girls school, and that was that we go home, we've had a half a day off, and I didn't think much of it. I, you know, I call myself first generation Bristolian, so both of my parents aren't from Bristol so I don't know how much in depth they knew about Colston or his legacy. But that aside, it was up then coming up to 90, around 1996 and I can remember watching the local news and seeing people from my community, African Caribbean, people protesting and being very unhappy on the screen and mentioning about the Colston statue. And I thought, what's going on? What is this about? So that was when I was first provoked to think I need to know more about who Colston is, because throughout our whole school career, we were not told anything about the, you know, the round of who Colston was.

So from that moment, I was actually doing my A levels at that point, and my head teacher was also my English tutor, and we would have our Tutor Time and our lesson in her office, Mrs. Franklin, and I can't remember what text we were it might have been Wuthering Heights or something or other, and we were discussing, and it was somehow aligned with activism or something. And I started asking and challenging. Why aren't we told about Colston? I can't remember my exact words as a teenager, but I was asking, and I was saying, you know, there's people in my community saying that the statue should be moved, come down. And, you know, from that moment, she just completely brushed it under the carpet, shut me down. I can remember just sitting there silently crying. Because not only was it just dismissing everything, you know, that I wanted to bring to the table to educate all of us, it was, it was, it was just very sly and underhand, but that was the moment when I started to challenge and started to think, well, this can't really go on. But then again, it was A-levels. You know, there was other things. I was a teenage mum as well. So there was a lot going on. You get on with your exams. I was hoping at that time to go to Bristol University to read law. And I'd managed through, through my tutor, Head Mistress, she put me in touch with a professor of law to go and have a coffee at Brown's. I mean, I was very nervous and shy, and I'd never had a cappuccino before at age 17. And, you know, I don't think we even had orange juice as kids. But anyway, and I didn't even drink it because it was so intimidating the thought of drinking a cappuccino, I just thought I remember about it, but I got on well with this professor of law, and it was like you have, you know, you couldn't, they couldn't give you an unconditional place, but you know, they could warm to you and didn't try and get you that place in law. So I had a conditional place. All of my mocks were good, all of my coursework was top class. I came out of my exams thinking I nailed that. The same time, the activism in me was riling up a bit. I was kept asking the questions, and my teachers would say, “Cleo, you can ask questions, you can be bothered, but don't get emotionally involved.” I'm thinking I would have done nothing in my life if I hadn't have got emotionally involved. So blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, I say all of that to say I still feel to this day that I was prevented from going to Bristol University because of my activism. So it's all quite deep. It's all quite long.

It's quite a big story, and I'm happy to say my truth, but from then, so we're talking 1998, 1996 to 1998 a big gap. Then artist Libita Clayton, who had a show here actually, she pops up in Bristol, and very energised, she does this pop up thing for October in around 2015 called BS2 Resistant Revolt. And she sets up a mock pirate radio station in Beef on Brunswick Square. So a few of us go along. She invites us on, as you know, guests. And it was me, Ros Martin, Roger Ball from Bristol radical history group, and a few others. I can't remember, but a few of us were there. And you know, Roger Ball is a very kind of anti-Colston-er, and it always comes about Merchant Ventures and all of that. So they were all talking. I started to talk about the fact that I went to Colston Girls, and that, you know, we had to go and celebrate Colston or commemorate him, every first Friday in November, the date was coming up to that. So I said, actually, the dates coming up to the first Friday, why don't we rock up to the cathedral and go and protest, basically. And that caught on. And a few about, maybe, I don't know, seven of us or so turned up. Bristol Radical History Group had done a really good pamphlet explaining about Colston's involvement in trafficking our ancestors. We even had Martin Burgess there. He was chair, I think, at the time of Bristol Music Trust, Colston Hall, now our first African heritage Merchant Venturer, she was there, and there were other people there. And what was quite interesting was it made headline news, actually, in a negative way, of us accosting students and blah, blah blah, we kept pushing to get meetings with people in the cathedral, people in the school, Colston Hall, all of that. But that was it. That was the moment when an officially countering Colston formed, and we were set on that we need to dismantle the public celebration of…People want to do things in their own time and space. It's up to them, but not a public celebration of anymore. This can't happen.

BT: Thank you for your activism, Cleo. Thank you for sharing that with us. So, I think the responses from both of the communities have been so different. Oh, I guess there has been protest in Stroud, but the sort of bureaucratic, well, there was bureaucratic-ness as well with Bristol but Bristolians, as we all saw in 2020, took it into their own hands. Oh my gosh. Honestly, I just will never forget that moment, because we were obviously in lockdown, and I'm like, I'm like, on Instagram, I'm like, yeah!

[Laughter]

BT: It was such an empowering moment as a young Black woman living in London. I was like, I literally thought I could do anything at that point, like I felt powerful. And like, yeah, it actually gets me so emotional thinking about that image. And just so, the direct action of the removing the Edward Colston statue during BLM versus the situation in Stroud, Dan, when I was going through the website, I just found, like the whole situation to be so bureaucratic. You've got a Stroud District Council, Community Representation Task Force.

DG: There’s Task Forces, there’s Review Panel Groups, there's lots and lots of words involved.

BT: And now you've got a, so in my, before we were talking earlier, and I was like, I was at dinner last night talking about doing this conversation. I was like, “Yeah, the, the, it's been taken down. I was probably like, yeah, it's not there. It's definitely not there.” And then when I was going for the website, I was like, Oh my gosh, it is still there.

DG: It's still there. It’s still very much still there.

BT: So how are you navigating this bureaucratic-ness. And, like, how does, yeah, how does one deal with being on the Task Force Representation?

DG: Slowly. You navigate it slowly.

BT: How many meetings a year had you have?

DG: Too many meetings. So, so it started off with a review panel, as things often do, and that was me as a local community representative. It was local councillors. It was local historians. It was council workers coming together to write this consultation, that asked for, amongst other things, people's opinions of the clock and what should happen to it. We started working on that in February 2021. The consultation went live in July 2021 on my birthday. In fact, that was a very weird birthday. That ran for about a month and a half. Just over a month and a half, we got 1600 responses. Like most consultations about like, potholes get like 17 it really had a lot of people talking. In fact, all the responses you can look at them , there's a link on the website that Bolanle mentioned, which is earf.info. I've got a…

BT: We're gonna talk about it.

DG: We're gonna talk about it. I've gotta plug it, yeah… 1600 responses, going from like one word answers to whole paragraphs. Firstly, secondly, all that. And then we went through all those responses, and it took us a good half a year, get to April 2022 where we present the recommendations. The kind of headline recommendation is for, and I'm going to like paraphrase it, but like very specific Council wording, for the council to pursue the removal of the Blackboy Clock with listed building consent from Historic England and offer it to the local museum. And they're very much still pursuing that, like, as in, they're trying to make it happen. The kind of catch 22 of it all is that if the owners of the clock want to move it, they have to get permission from Historic England, because its on a listed building, like, if people know listed buildings, if you want to do anything like replace a window, add a garage, whatever, it has to go through them. Historic England as a result of the heightened legislation around contested heritage brought in after Colston that was brought in in October 2023. Again, to give you an example of how bureaucracies work, Colston comes down 2020, every Conservative politician is like this is a bad thing. They only actually make the changes starting in 2021, properly, 2023. Historic England have to sign off on it moving. It can only be moved if Historic England knows where it's going to go, because it's a listed building asset. If the local museum want to accept the object, they need to know that it's coming with no conditions attached. As in, they need to know it can come straight to them, but it can't get moved until they know where it's going to go, and they can't accept it until it's coming straight to them. It's like caught up in this insane bureaucracy.

[Laughter]

DG: Yeah, so that's April 2022, one of those other recommendations was to develop a plaque that has more information about the clock, and that's where the Community Representation Task Force comes in, whole different group of people. This time it's all local residents. I'm one of them. And we co-write this plaque starting in December 2022 and it goes up in December 2024.

BT: Wow.

DG: Two whole years to write that plaque...

BT: How many edits did you have?

DG: A lot of edits, a lot of edits. But one important thing we found is that originally, the plaque wrote a history of the object, and it still has that history of the object, but we realised it was as important to bring in the history of the consultation and the debates around it. Like the plaque is essentially there's, like a blue section at the top that's all history, as in, like, clock history, and the orange section is a history of all these conversations around it, and that took two years, because Council things take time. You go through edits. It's got to be signed off by council teams, as well as that, the plaque had to go up, had to be designed to be graffiti proof, had to be sustainable whilst being durable. So, it's good for the environment, because we hope it's gonna be around for a long time. But also, if someone I don't know, like took an axe to it, it would take a lot of work before it fell over.

BT: Do you envisage the plaque still being there once the clock is hopefully, eventually, removed?

DG: I think so, yeah. I think the plaque will continue to be there. It might need an update to say that the clock is gone, but yeah, it's sort of the first proper bit of information at street level that exists. There just wasn't that before, and because it's where a primary school is it's written to be accessible. So I think a reading age of about 10 or 11, which also took a lot of work, because, you know, you start introducing important terms, like ‘abolition of slavery acts’ and like, how do you define that to people who might not have that information? Like, you want to make it accessible without assuming that you have, like, the in-depth knowledge, because not everyone does. But yeah, that brings us to December, 2024. This opened in February, 2025 we’re still in February. We had a really nice feature that The Guardian ran that came out the day of the show opened. And as part of that, we got a quote from Stroud’s new Labour MP, who said that he believes that the clock is offensive and should be , which is a positive step forward. The previous MP was very much for it staying up, and really leaned into the racist, far right dog whistles that came with that. So the next steps is, I've emailed the MP Simon Opher, we’re hoping to have a meeting soon to see what we can do with this new energy that's brought in from the new MP. The point is, these things take time if you're doing them the bureaucratic way. I think I've been very cautious that obviously Colston was going on for like, the debates around it were going for so many years before we got to the toppling point. It's not my work to bring that statue down by hand. It's the people who own that object. They need to decide to bring it down. They need to be aware that it's happening and made that decision because they know it's not right for it to stay up.

BT: How would you feel if a group of campaigners did take it down just themselves? Rather than…

DG: That's up to them. I'm not gonna say no.

[laughter]

BT: I saw the smirk.

DG: But…that’s all I’m gonna say on that. I’m not gonna say no.

BT: Great. Cleo, the debates around Colston happening since 1996, again revived in 2015, so it's also as bureaucratic. I'm not sure if it was as bureaucratic in the on-council level, until the council were ready to take it seriously, but I feel like, yeah it was a community driven action that led to the removal, the toppling of the Edward Colston statue. How do you view the role of public engagement and activism in addressing historical injustices? What lessons can other communities also learn?

CL: I think it's always important to support lobbies, activism. It's important that it's there, because it pushes the bureaucracy to a certain extent. If it didn't exist, then they probably wouldn't care, because, you know, we've got okay. It took you a while to see the object, but then once you saw it, there's like an investment from our heritage in terms of how we see it and what it means to us. So that engagement is important, because it's again, through the lens of, so to jump forward a bit, for example, there's a portrait of Colston and I worked in the museum in 1999 when we had a respectable trade exhibition, the first time the city talked about this history, and there was a portrait in there called, The Death of Colston. I saw it at the time, and I was probably interested in it, but hadn't really had it in mind for years. So throughout all of the campaigning and stuff is focused on Colston, who is sort of a symbol for wider things. Of course, he's just the name that represents certain things. So in as much as we talk about Colston, I have written a poem, but how many of us have spoken to Colston? Have you got something to say to Colston? What do you want to say to him?

I digress slightly, but my point was coming back to this portrait, The Death of Colston, and again, it's referenced in some history books, Madge Dresser references it, and also the more recent book by Mark Steeds, Roger Ball, From Wulfston to Colston, and it includes the image of an African heritage woman knelt at the bedside of Colston and this isn't a fictional character. This is a real person who was a personal servant of Colston, Black Mary. So now it's about we need to have her story. We need to focus. And all these years, why haven't we focused on her? We're going to struggle to get a lot of the bits and pieces. But just like my heritage, being of African, Jamaican descent, I probably won't go, ever go down the road of a DNA test I'm confident enough to know from the region of Jamaica and certain bits in my psyche enough that my dad showed me and told me, and some of our cultural practice to know that I'm part Akan and part Congolese, and that's what I say to people, “Why wouldn't I want to come from the centre of Africa.” When people ask me where I'm from. So you can fiction it when you don't have the facts, the joy is you can create a fiction around it. So now it's about imagining who is Black Mary? What does she represent? What is her story? So it's kind of spinning the narrative as well. And in a way, that is art, and art meets activism, which is what Dan has done. And looking through your timeline, it just jumps out of nothing. Well, a lot was a lot was done, but nothing was done. And so now something has been done because you've done it, and it's empowering, because something has shifted now, you know, and I think that's what activism should work alongside the art. So again, if it's just dancing or putting your frustrations or your thoughts into something creative, then at least in that moment, for yourself or for whoever you're with, or for anyone who's watching it or engaging with it, you do have that sense of something is moving, rather than waiting to be told that it's okay to do something, because that might never happen.

BT: Thank you. So, I’m going to read a short quote. The Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure website is a website that you’ve created, specifically for the project. And honestly, if you haven’t had a chance to look at it, at the end there are some iPads round there and you can go on it, and you can go on it online as well. Honestly, we need to talk about the archive. He’s listed from the very beginning of when the clock was made, who it was made by, you’ve got the accompanying text about, you’ve got everything. You’ve got snippets of newspapers, you’ve listed, well we’ll go into your personal history in minute, but its such an in-depth, well curated website. I was, I’m obsessed, not was, still obsessed with it. And then you’ve also gathered all these different responses form different writers and creatives, and one of them is from Tendai Mutambu and he discusses the Blackboy Clock’s function as an automaton reinforcing stereotypical images of Blackness for a largely white audience. He compares it to historical automata like the Louverture Clock, noting how these figures serve as racialised spectacles and symbols of control.

And earlier on today I told you how I feel when I saw the image of the clock. I didn’t even, firstly, just so everyone knows, the clock doesn’t even work, it’s not a working clock. But when I saw the image of the clock, I just thought, “oh my gosh, that poor boy has been banging it for 300 years.” And, Dan, based on what Mutambu has said, what subversive actions can be taken regarding the Blackboy Clock? I think you did it really well in this exhibition so you might want to discuss.

DG: Yeah, I mean I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to see the work yet. But here (Empty Alcove) we’re imagining that its removed and that everything is just peaceful because it is just an empty alcove. This is pretty much, so the clock is very much in situ, we have removed it digitally here and as time passes by as normal, not a care in the world. This work over here, the Rotting Figure work, in this very spooky black room over here, imagines what if we just watch it crumble over time. Just sort of five minutes of it crumbling and decaying we’re just watching it, we’re witnessing it. And I know that destruction is provocative, and it’s deliberately designed to be provocative, but the reality is that if this clock was moved to a museum it would cost about £30,000 to move it. So that’s removing it safely, that’s checking it for woodworm, that’s cleaning the bird poo off it, that’s storing it while that’s all happening, that’s putting it in a custom-made display case, that’s moving something else out of Stroud’s museum to put this object in. £30,000 is a lot of money to spend on something that people think is offensive. To keep it going in perpetuity. You know when you put something in a glass display box, you’re keeping it alive forever. This is a clock that rotted in the 1970s, it’s a clock that rotted in 2004 and was restored both times. It doesn’t make sense to keep it going in the future. So that’s why destruction makes sense to me. The amount of money it takes to destroy something. You could put that in a woodchipper that you’ve hired for the day, and that’s it. And the fact of the matter is, there are so many images of the clock available online already. I’ve chosen not to reproduce it here because I didn’t want to reproduce the image of something I’m trying to critique in order to critique, it felt counter intuitive. But that image has been photographed by newspapers in every possible angle, we have a website now with a timeline, as far as I am aware, more update to date than Wikipedia. I am destroying it but also giving you all the information. And the conversations that were happening in 2020, in 2021, and 2022, that maybe died down a bit over the last while have kind of come back to the forefront with the plaque going up, with the show opening. This object doesn’t need to take up space for us to have these conversations about it. And while maybe we can’t destroy because Historic England would have field day if I was like ‘put it in a woodchipper’, maybe it just doesn’t have to be seen for us to think about it, and discuss it and work out what to do moving forwards.

BT: Thank you for that. Cleo, we’re involved in something completely different. So, Dan campaigning to get rid of something, even though you have been on the side of campaigning to get rid of the Edward Colston statue, we’re also both working for Bristol Legacy Foundation. I want to touch on what it is to put something up in public space. That idea of like celebrate, well, wanting to celebrate. and wanting to put something else to be memorialized in public space. What it's like gaining public consensus throught the brilliant Project Truth Report. And how you’ve just approached community engagement and handling different opinions. Particularly, I think yeah Project Truth is like such a great. Yeah. So it's available on the Bristol Legacy Foundation website. So please have a read. But also thinking about some of the submissions we got from artists. So we had an open call for artists who, oh no, it was a closed call actually for us to create this memorial. And there were so many different is issue and I actually why are we why are we creating a memorial. So if you want to like expand on that kind of critique as well.

CL: Yes. So Bristol Legacy Foundation in its more recent iteration, came about around 2016, 2017 through deputy mayor at the time, Asher Craig. And it's because the conversations we have in community or as a city, and wider, about how do we address Bristol's legacy in relation to TTEA, which we use that term now, TTEA, the transatlantic trafficking in enslaved Africans, rather than using the term the slave trade. It keeps coming back. What are we doing about it? And it's never resolved. It's always kind of something. Maybe it’s… nothing in depth happens. Let's put it that way. So it keep it's going to keep coming back. Not even touching on the spiritual dimension of it, which we're nowhere near addressing. It's always going to keep coming back. So in this iteration, we got together as what was just a steering group at the time, and it's now developed into the foundation. And the first step was to actually ask African heritage communities, what did they think should happen in relation to this legacy? Because despite all the conversations we think we've had over the generations, there actually hasn't been a formal consultation done to get those opinions.

So that was when Project Truth was launched. Telling, restoring understanding our tapestry and history. Recognising that people of African heritage are from very different backgrounds. We're not a homogenous group, and there's a lot of work to do internally as a group and groups, as well as externally facing. And so, the idea was let's do a consultation but let's try and do it in a slightly different format than perhaps, you know, usually happens. So part of it was having a radio show, for example, and been able to touch on different topics as a way of also informing and educating because we're all on the journey, there's so much we're all learning all the time. We're all at different stages. So it was important to, how can how can I give an informed opinion if I don't have a lot of the information? Which is why, again, your website is so useful because it gives you the information to then see the show and then make a much more informed opinion about it.

So Project Truth was launched and we had launch events and different ways the community could engage. And it came down to an extensive report in many different categories. So the really big idea picture things, housing, health, education and a member of the Legacy Foundation, Jendayi Serwah-Tagoe was really sort of she was like, you know, my line manager because I led the consultation. But she was saying, you need to say to people, imagine that money isn't an issue. You need to get out of the box of thinking the limits that we always have. Oh, well, maybe we'll get an upgrade to Malcolm X Centre, or maybe we'll get to take a few of our young people to Ghana. Or maybe we'll get. And it's always so small in relation to what we actually need and deserve. So it was think big, think wide. Imagine money's not an object and think of the legacy, seven generations on.

So that really helped people, I think, to formulate ideas. And part of it was coming back to this idea of memorialisation. How do we honour our ancestors? How do we recognise the sacrifice, unwillingly, that they were put through for us to enjoy some of the things that we have today? There's a singer, an artist, Onalee who was part of Roni Size & Reprazent, and more recently she's like a digital artist as well. And she came up with this concept of having a digital statue in the city, this was some years ago, of an African heritage woman, and she started to reframe the idea of the enslaved African as a founder of the city. And I thought, that's a very empowering mind switch as to how to think of ourselves. So I feel that's quite in line with the work we're doing now. Working with yourself to actually realise, finally, something of significance, not a plaque near Pero’s Bridge, which you can easily miss, telling us about Pero Jones who was brought here as an enslaved African or another plaque near M Shed. There’s nothing of significance to cement our position in the city for not only ourselves and our future generations, but for all people of all backgrounds to appreciate,

BT: Especially compared to the, just spending the last year in Bristol, I'm like, everything is named after Colston.

CL: Yeah, I think another going back to the imagery as well, and the idea of the blackamoor or the moor I mean it, it's kind of, you know, you learn, you unlearn, you learn some more, moor. But there's a lot of names connected to the city. So we've got Cabot, we've got Colston. The big C's, should we say, can make up what C might stand for yourself.

[Laughter]

CL: But there's also the name Cannings right and Cannings was like a lot of these people. MP, mayor of the city, he’s buried in Saint Mary Redcliffe Church and was probably, you know, was, in existence around the time of like the Cabots and the Columbus's and all of that, but according to historians, wasn't involved in trafficking African people but may have been involved in trafficking Icelandic or Irish children. Anyway. Obviously, a lot of wealth he gave to create Saint Mary Redcliffe Church. But its his coat of arms, which is three moors heads. And when I saw that years ago, I was so automatically intrigued. Why, why haven't I seen this, why don't we talk about this? And why is why is he got three moors heads and it's not what is, what is a moor? And you look at the image and it is, I wouldn't say it was a derogatory image actually either. It's not, it doesn't look like a caricature. You can actually see some carved in Saint Stephen's Church, so the coat of arms appears around the city. In moors study, the moors head is one of the oldest forms of European heraldry. And if you look, listen to other academics now, it’s more like it's nothing to do with us as African heritage, people being enslaved. It more goes back to the time when African heritage people would have been in more control of places in Europe. So it’s, there's so many layers to things to learn and unlearn in this city itself. And I think, yeah, just having that time to do the research, and to say and also to talk to young people, does it matter or does it not matter? You know, I followed the work of Doctor Marie Charles, who will say, well, there's lots of European names and their family crest is of African heritage people is because originally they would have been African heritage. I mean, I say that to my 14 year old son is like, well, yeah, mum is from Africa. Was the start of everything. That makes perfect sense. So to him, it made sense, which was kind of encouraging. But that's just to say, there's so much that we probably don'tknow. And when we start picking back the layers, I don't know where we'll end up. But I'm hoping that would be a in a better place than we found ourselves for for too long really.

BT: I'm gonna, sorry, I took out my phone because I want to read out one of the quotes from the Project Truth respondents. It's like our lead quote. ‘We are living descendants of our African ancestors and their future generations living in this and their and their future generations living in the city are a huge debt to those trafficked and enslaved. We are here because of them. We are their dreams of tomorrow. So let's hold up, let’s hold them up in our midst, in in a monument or monuments, why one, that honors and dignifies their memory, their lives, humanity and struggles. We might then remember their courage, bravery, resistance and survival as part of our shared past and continuing struggle in the city today.’ And I definitely feel like that encompasses what you just spoke about.

So I've got a couple of more questions, am I on time still? Okay, good. The website we get to talk about the website, even though we have touched on it, but just touching on it again, there's a few things that I'm really interested in the website, Dan. So you've created all of this time you've created the timeline, I'd love to know how much time you spent in the archives, what archives you used. How did you choose what to not include? Because it’s, we, yeah, you we can see what you've included, what how was, how did, what was your process of ‘okay, that's kind of relevant, but I'm not going to include it.’ And what's really interesting is that you've also included details of your family's history alongside that information. And yeah, I just wanted to know your reasonings behind, like documenting yourself within that timeline.

DG: So in terms of the archives that were used, it started with me buying local history publications off eBay, and it was more a case of just following my paper trails. So the one that sort of starts all this book is Called notes and Recollections of Stroud, which was written by a guy called P H Fisher. He was just like a columnist, right? And he just writes about what's happening in Stroud over the course of all these years. And that's the first reference to when the clock was first depicted in print. It just says this guy, John miles, made it at this, it didn't say when he made it, just that he made it, it’s been there ever since yada yada yada. And then, just by doing a lot of digging, I found more publications, and those all sort of had, like a bit of a paper trail. This guy called Ramon R Willey, who was the caretaker of the Black Boy school. So this building was originally a school, as it was, sort of coming to the end of his life of being a school, he was doing all this research and wrote this book called The Black Boy School, yada yada yada. I found a copy on AbeBooks, Vinted, something like that, not Vinted, that’s where you by clothes, AbeBooks, eBay, something like that, I’ve got clothes on my mind, and that just had loads of really tantalising mentions of dates.

I used to work in Stroud Library, and we had the newspaper archives for the Stroud News and Journal, which is like Stroud’s local newspaper on microfiche rolls. So I literally had a case of like someone says something about 1974, I'm going to go and just go through every newspaper from 1974 to figure out where it is, and that article referenced something in 1961, so now I’m going to go to 1961 and literally just making this sort of slightly weird paper trail to pull it all together, and then as part of a project called Cast in Stone, which is actually how me and Cleo first met, they were wanting to do a case study for their website, and through that, we were able to go to Gloucestershire archives and look at lots of council meeting minutes from the 70s, from the 2000s to sort of pad out more of the behind the scenes conversations, let's say.

BT: Were these digitalized at this point?

DG: All analog. So I had someone, I wasn't in Stroud at the time, but I had someone go to the archives, and was able to, like, scan everything in for us. But that was really useful to see what was happening behind the scenes, because obviously news stories only tell you the finished results. So interesting to see, proper things, people being like, oh, we've run out of money to do this bit, need a bit more money to do this, but there was a whole paper trail about like someone putting when it was first restored, they put a plaque somewhere, but it was too high, so they moved it down, and they moved it back to where it was, and all this kind of stuff. So yes, really putting together that paper trail, there were a few dead ends that didn't end up on the website, just because we couldn't find where that led. But pretty much most of the story is there. And obviously, if more information comes to light as part of this process, now that the exhibition is open and more people are thinking about it, that will be added to the website in due course,

The reason why I'm on there and my family is on that is to just give a sense of time. Like, obviously, you know this timeline starts in like, 1774, but by the time it gets broken in the 1960s, that's when my mom was born in Stroud. Like, it made sense to have that in, to be like, okay, so this wasn't happening in isolation, like these conversations were happening when black people were living in Stroud and black people were born in Stroud. Like it wasn't just something that happened in the past, and it's the past, and, you know, we can't judge the past of what is. I’m like, no, my mom was, like, living her best life while this was happening. And that's why it made sense to have it all, to sort of be like, you know, I started primary school in 2004 and that's when the clock was last restored.

BT: You’re so young

DG: I know, I know, I don’t like to flex it but thank you! But like having that as something on the timeline to be like this racist depiction of a black boy was restored in the same year that I started primary school on a building that's next door to my primary school, like you almost need the human element in there to ground it not just like dates, it's the past, we can't judge the past.

BT: Yeah, can we just give him a round of applause? Please?

[Applause]

BT: I have, I can't wait to go back on this site. I told you, everyone's getting sent the website, and it's gonna be a huge reference. I think we've kind of touched on number seven. So I'm gonna jump into number the last question, which is around, actually, maybe Cleo, you might want to touch on this. And both of you, I guess you're doing it here and Cleo mainly your practice is dance and research. And how do you deal with these contentious historical objects in your artistic practice? And how do we, like you kind of have touched on, like, the role art plays in opening up new dialogues and definitely changing perceptions. But like, if you if there's anything you wanted to add?

CL: Yeah, I think finding ways, again, to empower, encounter what's going on. So through dance, being able to create memorialisation through movement, and for that to be a way of also having the story of the past, but also the story of what's happening now. So it's another way of archiving what's going on and a way of keeping it in your body. First of all, finding out what the body wants to tell you about what it already knows. And that makes me think of some of our other contested if you like, spaces around the city. We do have a Black Boy Hill next to a Whiteladies road that we're constantly told it's got no connection to anything. It's about nuns and a royal person. And we also have Redcliffw caves, and elders would always say, well, that's where they kept us…

BT: I think I walked past it today, I got really lost on the way here. Does it have like, houses? And then there's like a…

CL: Bit like a terrace…

BT: And then there's like this weird looking like, like the knights would have opened it up…

CL: Possibly, I don't know what the…

BT: A gate. Thank you.

[Laughter]

CL: And the sort of redness of it…

BT: It was quite scary, actually.

CL: But it's sort of like a knowing that is dismissed because, well, some European person hasn't written that down in a book, so it can't be real. But these people were so insistent, that's where they kept us. And so many times it was dismissed by academia. But now actually academia, academics are saying, Oh, well, there is evidence that there would have been African heritage people kept in the caves. Not necessarily directly as enslaved people afterwards, but nevertheless of that heritage. So yeah, there's things to kind of balance, to to bring out of ourselves sometimes, and to see what knowledge maybe our elders have, what younger people are feeling, how we can bring that together and find other ways.

Alongside the memorial at Cascade, the podium at Cascade steps, we want it not to just be a static monument, which again came out through Project Truth, but a site of ritual, a site of celebration, a destination where people can go and reflect, but also it be animated. And that was quite, that was a really strong point from a consultation, that people wanted to feel energized and be give energy to wherever that happens to be. So, yeah, I enjoy trying to work with dance and movement and film as well, and find, or poetry, just any, any outlet that that speaks to us. And, you know, as artists, I sometimes used to think, all right, well, you know, we get things together. We have ideas. You've obviously had this idea for however long, but sometimes it's it's a lifetime in the making. It might have come together in the last couple of years, but actually it's been a lifetime. Or sometimes it's been more than our lifetime. It's been our parents or our grandparents or people before us. So yeah, I'm excited to see this next chapter for Bristol, which I hope will have also ricochets across neighbouring parts of of the country.

BT: Do you have anything to add, Dan?

DG: Yeah, I think, yeah. I mean, this is very much the culmination of a lot of work. But what's important is that whilst this show is important for me, for my soul, or, you know, institutional validation, like what's happening down in Stroud will continue after this, like, you know, this show, it tours to London after this, and then in September, this all gets taken down, put in a box or whatever. But like those conversations in Stroud will still very much be happening. You know, the show is not a closing chapter. It's kind of more of a starting chapter of something new.

I actually have a question for you. Cleo, like this work can be very demanding to do, like dealing with institutions, dealing with everything that comes along with trying to make a change. How do you like carve out space to, well for yourself? You know, amongst all the, let's say, general fuckery that comes with trying to make a change happen.

CL: Yeah, and I think sometimes we get busy, and it's when we kind of stop, and then it sort of hits us a bit. But it is important to be able to take time and also be around people that understand what we're doing and support us. So if we feel that we have a negative corner somewhere, we need to support ourselves with the positive corner, and people will have all different views about what we want to do, or what we're doing, or what we're not doing, and I think, you know, even with the work I want to do at the moment, there's so many different views from the community, but as the artist or the person doing the work, you it's about staying but this is also my vision. I can be sort of influenced, and I'm willing to listen, and I like to include people, but also you have to go with what you think. And that can be the hardest part, sometimes, just pushing through with what you think.

BT: I was wondering as well, like Cleo, the space you occupy is artists and activists, where people are always expecting you to do for them. And like as an artist, I think an artist is a very can be a very selfish kind of profession. Actually, do you create what you want to create? And it's, I'm guessing, like, now you're trying to reinsert that boundary between the activist who's Cleo and the artist who's Cleo.

DG: Yeah, and I collaborate with other people, so, you know, that's the space of collaboration, really, and trying to negotiate what we're coming up with, you know? So the moment we've had, we've got the memorial dance. Now we're working with musicians to create it. We've been jamming with them, but now it's like, well, this is what we'd like at this part of the dance. And they're pushing back and saying, Well, this should be this, and then a dancer is saying, but that doesn't keep the integrity of the movement, so it's a lot to negotiate.

I was just wondering, Dan, if you've invited the owners, whoever they are, of the object, have they been invited? Have you had a dialogue with them? Are they approachable?

DG: I have not had a direct dialogue with them. The council have attempted to have a dialogue with them, and I definitely invited the council to come along. They'll be coming at some point, hopefully. But we are aiming to do a version of this in Stroud at some point that will hopefully start some conversations off. Because, you know, Stroud and Bristol, they're close, but they're not that close. You kind of have to be someone who is willing to drive or get the train to come and see contemporary art. Not everyone likes contemporary art. Not everyone likes galleries. The fact that you're here today means that you have an interest. Yeah, I think bringing the work to Stroud, will get those conversations on the ground going, and I hope to have a dialogue with the owners then, but it's very much, I’ve, I've started the conversation. I very much try to start the conversation here with what I'm doing here and everything that I've done. I think it's up to them to pick up that conversation with me, with the council, with whatever outlet to try and make something happen.

BT: You kind of asked my last question, but Dan, I will now sort of point this question to you, like, how do you practice self care in all of this? You know, the articles. And again Cleo, you can answer this question like I've seen the articles that have come out from for BLF, and even pre BLF, when you was Lord Mayor and Dan, the kind of sort of Daily Mail hits, the holy trinity of hell I call it, Spectator Telegraph, the right wing sort of press. What self care strategies have you put in place for yourselves?

DG: So a part of that is just knowing when to not look at the comment sections. I've been very guilty of like, I'm gonna read through these.

BT: Have you ever responded? Don’t lie.

DG: No, I've never responded. I've thought about it. I never responded. It's more been like me sending something to someone and being like, isn't this just ways, but part of it is, yeah, knowing when to log off. But also as a kind of this site, behind the scenes, part of all this work, you're very much seeing everything that's happening here. As part of this commission, I asked Chisenhale and Spike Island to pay for therapy, because, you know, what you see here is a processing of a lot of stuff that's happened, and I felt that I needed to be able to process that in order to make what we have in the gallery today. So yeah, that's kind of a behind the scenes artwork, I guess me going to therapy.

BT: Brilliant access rider. Cleo?

CL: Yeah, I think again, when working with other people, having that time out of the making, to actually check in with each other, how are we feeling? Shall we write about how, you know, how it's going for ourselves and how we can support each other through I think that's really important.

BT: Okay, so thank you so much. I've learned so much from this conversation. If we can all just breathe, I know it’s been quite a heavy conversation. And yeah, if anyone has any questions… Hey, please say your name, who you are, a bit about yourself.

Audience Member 1: I'm Ayan. Thank you so much for the talk. It's been really lovely, and it's a lot, not a lot to take in, but in terms of why it is a lot to take in, but yeah, I felt like there's been a lot of learning. My question actually is a bit, it feels selfish, but actually I wanted to ask a question to Cleo, because I remember being at City Hall, Bristol City Hall on a Friday and seeing the, well actually it was only two years ago, the Colston Hall, Colston Hall girls school, I don't know if it's still called, the gathering outside City Hall, and there being the kind of Lord Mayors coming out. And at the time, I think it was two white males. It was a Lord Mayor and another guy as well. And they were all dressed up, and I remember looking at this kind of scene they were doing, this kind of waving at, essentially, what was like a huge school of girls, and it being this really strange experience, and wondering, you know, do they realise how strange and archaic this all looks? I wondered if you had any thoughts, and you ever interrogated or questioned any of that?

CL: Yeah, I'm not entirely sure which, are you talking about? A commemoration at the Cathedral, and then people coming out of City Hall connected to it?

AM1: So They were stood at City Hall. So I don't know if it had anything to do with the but they, I don't know. I assume this was something that was happening ritualistic, yeah,

CL: I think what came across through my term as Lord Mayor is that there were so many conventions that people just go along with they don't question it anymore. Simply, this is the day, this is what you do, this is what you wear, and this is what happens. So trying to question and interrupt that was quite interesting. And a lot of the time, you know, you get staff members who will say, well, that's just how it's done. And I wouldn't ask this, or I wouldn't do that. And, you know, do you do what you feel for as a kind of uh, more of an aside example. It's like wearing a white Poppy alongside the red alongside the black for Remembrance Day, and being told, well, the black is probably okay, but I wouldn't wear the white because that will offend veterans. And I thought, Well, okay, I'll obviously be conscious of that. But let me also, every opportunity I have to meet an elder veteran, ask them what their view is in the, you know, gentlest, friendliest way I could, which I did, and all of them, whether they were being very British and polite and not saying the truth, but all of them didn't have a problem with it, the ones I spoke to. So some people have in their head an idea of something. I, it does some of those things that happen do verge on a kind of culriam. And I think again, certain sections of society have been very good at pointing out to the othering of this and that, and, oh, you shouldn't do this. And, oh, look at those people doing that over there, but actually an epicenter of some of the weird stuff that goes on is right here in the city and in this country, and who knows what that feeds into or what that's all about.

I mean, as many of you will know, because it's documented so well, certain sections of the merchant venturers going to see the fingers, you know, fingernails and air of Edward Colston around his birthday time. And, you know, really bizarre stuff that goes on. It's quite uncomfortable, really, isn't it? But yeah, I think something that comes to mind as well that I think about sometimes. And I was writing a pamphlet of some of the speeches I gave, and it was like getting pissed with and pissed that privilege, and that was very much the experience. You know, you had to rub shoulders with people who were a very, very different background. Again, were so caught up in convention that they didn't realize what they were doing. And that can be quite dangerous, actually, when it's a ritual form, maybe the intention matters, but maybe it doesn't matter as well. So I hope that sort of answers your question.

But yeah, I don't know how many more years people will wear the red robe. I mean, I tried to secretly order a green one, and they caught me out, and that didn't go through. But it's a bit bizarre, isn't it? And how did Marvin feel now being a Lord, in the House of Lords, again wearing the red robe. I mean, these things date back to pre colonialism, at least, so you know, at least we can say that. But yeah, how long they'll exist for? How relevant they are? Who knows? They don't seem relevant. Just like some of the statues or portraits, it wasn't just removing them because of they are Enslavers, but why do I, why would anyone want to look at that? How is that interesting? An old person? I mean, it could be interesting, but it certainly wasn't. Why are they relevant anymore? So I think there's an element of that to it.

AM1: Thank you Cleo, Thank you.

AM2: Hello. First I am, I want to know when those traditions started, whether it was something that started in Victorian times when the statue was put up, or whether it's been going on since Colston died, you know, 194 years before that. Interesting questions. I work for the Bristol museums as like a visitor assistant. So we're there kind of around the Colston statue day to day.

BT: In the M Shed?

AM2: yeah, yeah, or across the museums. But lots of people ask about it. Lots of people from outside Bristol, coming to visit, are interested in the object, asking questions. And there's a whole spectrum of people saying it should be restored, it should be back on the plinth, or it should be melted down and destroyed, and everything in between. And a lot of them are grateful to have that context, that place that they can travel to in order to have those conversations, or have conversations with people with different views, and all that sort of thing. The statue benefited from the drama of the effigy being pulled down and the violence of that, that kind of got everybody's interest, created that spark for that conversation, and led to it being put on display expensively, as you say, and you're absolutely right. I've been talking to colleagues throughout today. I was quite excited about coming here and hearing you talking about the list, because it's, you know, it's very relevant to kind of what we're working around. And one of my colleagues said something that kind of gave me real pause, and they they wanted to know what you're proposing in the destroying of the Blackboy Clock could be interpreted as kind of a violent act, the destruction of an effigy. And she kind of contrasted the destruction of this effigy of what is, sort of represents a victim of history, whilst at the same time, the museum is sort of preserving this object that represents an oppressor. And I just wondered if you could speak to that?

DG: Yeah. I mean, I think what's so interesting about Colston’s statue that we know who Colston is, there's a lot of history about who this guy was, what he did. This Blackboy Clock figure doesn't represent anyone, like, it's not a named person. It's a racist caricature effigy. You know, there are so many stories out there, I did a lot of research for a previous project that I made into parish records, which are sort of examples of times that people have interacted with the church. A lot of our records pre, you know, 1800s for example, it's all parish records when people did something notable enough to be recorded in a book, right? And with the church, its births, its christenings, its marriages, its deaths, and there were so many traces of people, much like Black Mary that you talked about, these sort of traces of people where we don't have that history, and I would rather that history be explored in a museum, trying to figure out what we can about someone who was a real person that we have a glimpse of, rather than preserve something that doesn't represent anyone. Yeah.

AM2: Thank you

BT: Paula?

AM3: You've got me thinking about accreditation and buildings, and who owns buildings, and then who, who's the accreditation of, like, who, who nominates and designates that as a heritage building. And I just wondered if you've done any research into that, because that, that in itself, I'd imagine, is a colonial history. Yeah. And when that, and when that happened, was that in a charity, charities are born out of a kind of, you know, organisation. They're born out of a kind of colonial perspective of of helping and and supporting and enabling. I don't mean, you know this is not what Spike Island is about, but you know, it is a charity. There's all this history around structures, as well as, as as the also the kind of the object. So I just wondered if there's something in the process of how things are credited that you've looked at as well. Yeah, just got me really off in a

DG: No, I have, I have, I've got an answer for you. So The List, which is the official name for like, the listed buildings register that was set up as part of the post war effort to sort of instil people's faith in British architecture. Obviously, a lot of stuff got bombed in the war, so it's kind of like what's still there, what means preserving. Stroud has another object which is quite different to the Blackboy Clock, called the Slavery Abolitoin Arch. It was made in 1834, by a local philanthropist called Henry Wyatt to commemorate the abolition of slavery. It exists on the other side of the town, and for years, before the conversations about the clock even started in 2020, 2021, that was celebrated because it was the UK's oldest memorial to the Abolition of Slavery, albeit one made by a white guy who obviously had a hand in, you know, putting the slavery abolition act through, but it's very much a kind of congratulatory gesture. That was listed before the building that the Blackboy clock on was listed. It was listed as the Stroud Teacher Centre, because that's what it was at the time, and it was listed as an example of whatever the area that comes after the Victorian era, it was listed an example of 1840s architecture, right? Because it was a historic building that survived. The Blackboy Clock is mentioned as part of the listing. Like, it's very much off-handedly referred to as, like, you know, 18th century black boy figure. Like, it's a very mundane description, but because it's attached to that listing and described in there, it's part of the historic fabric, which makes the case for trying to move it even harder. Like, it's not just like, I want to add an extension to the garage. It's like, this is a labelled part of it.

And the list is run by Historic England, which is, I'm going to say the word wrong, or the phrase wrong, like a non-governmental body. So it's not run by the government, but takes all its advice from the government, funded by the government, essentially an extension of the government. So to keep something up, as part of Historic England remit is essentially the government saying, cool. We like this. On top of that, when the Blackboy Clock was restored in 2004 it was put into a trust by the owners of the clock in order to fundraise for it. And as part of that fundraising, they got, I think, about eight grand in total. Some of that was from Jubilee funding, which was when the Queen had her Diamond, Silver, Jubilee in 2003 and the Jubilee funding was decided by Stroud town council to fund the restoration of clocks. I think another clock got restored. So what I'm saying is the reason. And why it's still on display now is because Historic England as an organisation preserved it when it was added to the list, in I think the 1960s. When it was restored in the 70s, it was part of a building owned by Gloucestershire County Council because it was a school or teacher centre. When it was restored in 2004 it was put into a trust and restored with funding that came from central government. Like it's never been, you know, maybe some bits has some private funding involved, but it's always been restored through charitable means, essentially, and it's still up. I hope that answers your question or statement, yeah.

BT: Yeah, I think your level of knowledge just takes it up. It takes it to, I think that's what takes it from, okay, I just want to remove it to, actually, I've done the research, I know exactly who's funded, when it's been funded, how it's been funded, and when you do ask for its destruction or removal, it comes with that kind of fact behind it. It comes with all of that. It's just yeah, it's brilliant.

Hi, lovely to meet you. Did you have a question? Yeah?

AM4: I’m so sorry. I put my hand up because it just popped into my head.

BT: Don’t apologise!

AM4: I’m just very grateful to have the opportunity to even ask you this question, because I first encountered you two years ago at Ashton Court when you did another piece.

DG: Oh amazing!

AM4: I didn't counter you, but I counted your work then. And my New Year's resolution in 2025 is to be less passive, and I love the fact that you're using art as a form of activism. And so I was wondering, as someone who really values what you tried to put in regards to this exhibition, how could each of us here today help further your cause towards removing the clock?

DG: That's such a good question. I would say your best bet is to write to Stroud District Council, essentially the council, they’re the ones that did the consultation. They don't have the power to remove the object because trust probably their own building, but they're the ones who will work towards making that happen. They said they wanted to pursue the removal, and I think now is a good time to write to them and say that you've heard about the story, you've read about it, seen the show, and that you want to know what the latest update is. That's why I'd recommend doing.

AM4: Thank you.

BT: Do we have any other questions, thoughts? I want to say thank you so much for sharing this evening of us. I want to give another round of applause to Dan and Cleo...

[Applause]