Welfare State International were an influential performance group based in the UK and founded in 1968 by John Fox and Sue Gill. Fox was, and remains, a vociferous proponent of 'celebratory theatre' and an anarchic, energetic and imaginative approach to creating theatre. In 2006 they felt the radical edge had gone elsewhere. It was necessary to avoid re-inforcement of the status quo - see "Flight from Spectacle". Fox and Gill archived the company in 2006 and formed Dead Good Guides, their new company, with associate artists, to pursue research into ecology, perception and performance. A collective of WSI's core artists was waiting in the wings to take the work forward with a 3 year plan for Lanternhouse. This was rejected by the board.
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In the late 1960s Welfare State emerged from a group of teachers and students at Bradford Art College. John Fox was among this group as was Albert Hunt. The early group were itinerent, travelling with an entourage of trucks and caravans, and seeing themselves very much part of the alternative and radical sub-culture of the period. In 1972 they were eventually invited by Mid-Pennine Arts to settle down on a disused waste site in Burnley, Lancashire and began to develop a series of ambitious 'Celebratory Theatre' events. Boris and Maggie Howarth joined the company at this time. Boris had been involved with John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy and eventually became joint artistic director. Howarth invented large scale fire spectacles such as "Parliament in Flames", which developed from 1974 - 1981. Fox and Howarth collaborated on devising and directing several symphonic performances in landscape for WSI - notably "Tempest on Snake Island" 1981 Canada and "Wasteland and the Wagtail" 1982 Japan. He left in 1987, leaving John Fox to share artistic responsibility with Sue Gill. The company moved from Burnley in 1978, eventually settling in Ulverston in Cumbria in 1980, and creating Lanternhouse which remains as an arts centre with few links to the WSI years. [1]
During their existence WSI nurtured many of the creative individuals who founded the next generation of the leading performance companies in the UK and further afield, including the group of artists who left in 1976 to form IOU Theatre, Pete Moser of More Music Morecambe, and Bob Frith of Horse and Bamboo Theatre. Walk the Plank, Emergency Exit Arts, Dogtroep [Netherlands], Shadowland [Canada], Neil Cameron [Australia], Wildworks, Strange Cargo, Liverpool Lantern Co. Musical Directors of Welfare State International included Mike Westbrook, Lol Coxhill, Boris Howarth, GP Hall, Luk Mishalle, Chris Hobbs, Greg Stephens, Peadar Long, Tim Fleming, Pete Moser, Tim Hill.
WSI were ecelectic in their use of theatre forms and their work frequently brought together including carnival, procession, large puppets, music, visual performance and folk/popularist traditions in a variety of combinations. They were initially influenced by Vermont's Bread and Puppet Theater both visually and ideologically. However, whilst Bread and Puppet is an overtly political company, Welfare State were committed not to make agit-prop or didactic performance, instead WSI drew deliberately on British popular theatre traditions:
This long-term research-as-practice seeks to re-establish, away from the conventional building based middlebrow/middle-class theatre, the popular theatre traditions of the Working Class, such as Carnival, Feast of Fools, the fairground, the mummers' plays, that vein of subversion-as-entertainment that runs through so much of folk theatre and song. From the early 1980's WSI held annual summer and winter schools to pass on to other artists and performers the techniques and prototypes they had made: carnival processions, street bands, giant puppets, street theatre, site specific theatre, lantern parades, shadow theatre, installations, allegorical interventions, rites of passage work. This education programme, directed by Sue Gill, culminated in the MA in Cultural Performance with the University of Bristol Dept of Drama, Theatre, Film and TV 1999 - 2006. [2]
As well as making public performances, WSI devised public and private ceremonies such as weddings, funerals and naming ceremonies and anthemic public rites of passage such as "Trawlers at Peace" Grimsby 1993.
Welfare State International started doing cermonies to celebrate the birth of their own children, and to focus on the naming of each child as an event to be shared with family and friends. In each case, none of the parents concerned felt, at that time, that an orthodox christening service or church baptism would be relevant to the views they held. Nevertheless, there were strong feelings about not letting the occasion pass unnoticed, simply because established cermonies were inappropriate.[2]
1994 saw the first workshop in devising secular funeral ceremonies. The publication on "The Dead Good Funerals Book " followed in 1996, since fully revised and republished in 2004.
For the Year of the Artist 2000 WSI commissioned 16 international designers and artists, including Hussein Chalayan, Gavin Turk, George Shaw and Bob & Roberta Smith to create funerary artefacts for their DEAD exhibition at the Roundhouse in London.
John Fox was always committed to working on a grass-roots level in collaboration with communities.
"Welfare State International is a company of artists who pioneer new approaches to the arts of celebration and ceremony in the U.K. and internationally.
We are seeking a culture which may well be less materially based but where more people will actively participate and gain power to celebrate moments that are wonderful and significant in their lives.
We advocate a role for art that weaves it more fully into the fabric of our lives; that allows us to be collaborators rather than spectators:
Building our own houses, naming our children, burying our dead, announcing partnerships, marking anniversaries, creating new sacred spaces and producing whatever drama, stories, songs, ceremonies, pageants and jokes that are relevant to these new values and iconography.
We design and construct performances that are specific to place, people and occasion.
Special festivals of celebration that reach a wide audience, collaborative exhibitions and installations, original songs and soundscapes, and ceremonies for important occasions in people's lives.
WSI's artists are deeply concerned for the survival of the imagination and the individual within a media-dominated consumer society, in which art too has become a commodity. All our work - especially our generation of primary artwork - takes a holistic and educational perspective.
Our long-term aim is to establish creative communities on our doorstep: to work in partnerships to develop a creative society where the full potential of each individual may be realised in a supportive environment, through active participation and imaginative play.
We offer full access and opportunities for the dispossessed and seek a multi-generational and multi-ethnic congregation.
Art has a central and radical role in our lives. In the everyday, it's about what we value, how and why we celebrate."[3]
Fox, John (2002). Eyes on Stalks. Methuen. ISBN 0413761908. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6NoLAAAACAAJ&dq=eyes+on+stalks&client=firefox-a.