Katy Bauer (above, right) is an artist, writer and volunteer for the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft, a community group promoting the Bristol neighbourhood of Stokes Croft as a cultural quarter. Last year, she set up the Stokes Croft Museum, a one-room exhibit celebrating the area’s diversity. She tells IdeasTap how she did it…
What’s happening in Stokes Croft is a microcosm of what’s happening in cities all over the world, to funky old areas that are neglected and occupied by poor people and by artists who can’t afford to have studios in the more expensive parts of town.
These people make an area interesting through their own slog and creativity – by their very presence. And because it’s more interesting, speculators and developers are looking to turn it into everywhere else.
It’s depressing, but you have to take a stand against these things. I built this museum in an attempt to reveal some of the diverse, creative and generous things that have happened in the recent past and present in this area; to give them museum status in the hope that people see them as valuable. It’s like the sign on the wall says: “Don’t Develop Stokes Croft. Let Stokes Croft Develop.”
I work very quickly. From having the idea for a museum to taking the lease on this place to opening was just three months. I had to sit down and think: what should be in the museum? I asked people, “What are you doing? What is important to you?” And from that, I put together a list of things that seemed most significant to Stokes Croft.
It’s all very homemade: the signs are printed on my computer and stuck up with Blu-Tack. The sections range from “Protest” and “Squatting” to “Archaeology” and “Stokes Croft Through the Ages” – every museum has to have that display!
Dogs [below] are a thing; chips are a thing. Bears are a big thing. There was a woman who used to wander up and down Jamaica Street dressed as either a bride or a bear, and there’s the Bearpit, a subway at the bottom of Stokes Croft, which the council do nothing about.
We also have the ashes of a deceased street beat poet, Alan Smith, who used to be known as Bear. He was homeless for many years and died in the toilets in Broadmead. When you die and have no money, they give you a pauper’s funeral and put your ashes in a kind of brown plastic coffee jar. There was nobody to claim them so I asked Bear’s closest friend, Tommy, if we could collect them and put them in the museum. And he said: “Yes, this would be a good place for them.” So here he is.
The museum cost me just over £1,000 to build. The rent is £75 a week and we charge people £1 entry – I could have made it free, but I think people are suspicious of free stuff. I hope it’s informative. I’m the creator, the curator, the inventor, but as much as possible, the displays are written by the people who live and work here. I was a journalist in the past, but we’re so used to things being digested through others. Visitors seem excited to read what real people have to say.
Say the word “museum” and you take what’s inside more seriously. It’s funny old stuff, but that’s where the poignancy, texture and the interest in life lies. There are a lot of shattered people in Stokes Croft, but it ain’t dull, let’s put it that way. This is not your average high street and we hope it stays like that.
Katy Bauer was talking to Nancy Groves.
Stokes Croft Museum and Fake Memory Arcade is at 81-83 Stokes Croft, Bristol BS1 3RD. For more details, visit their website.