Make Your Own Entertainment / Homecoming

Two participatory projects with members of the Staffordshire carnival troupe dancing community (also known as ‘entertainers’) conducted as part of the KULES residency at Olympus Engineering works in Stoke-on-Trent (supported by the Airspace Gallery). Make Your Own Entertainment engaged with the social history of carnival troupe dancing, previously associated with young female factory workers, and involved the choreography of a site-specific performance in the factory basement which mimicked the action and sounds of machinery. Homecoming contemplated the relationships between tradition and material practice, augmenting the making processes of troupe dancers, with the imported US high school tradition of ‘homecoming’ ‘mum rosettes.