Dr Naomi Paxton takes part in the 2023 Being Human Festival
On 15 November, Central’s Dr Naomi Paxton (Knowledge Exchange Associate Fellow) will take part in a collaborative performance event – Pockets of Power! - as a part of the 2023 Being Human Festival.
The Being Human Festival is the UK’s national festival of the humanities. A celebration of humanities research through public engagement, it is led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, the UK’s national centre for the pursuit, support and promotion of research in the humanities. The festival works in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy to support humanities public engagement across the UK.
Originally commissioned by Theatre and Circus for the 2023 Glastonbury Festival, Pockets of Power! draws on research from the ‘Politics of Patents’ project at Goldsmiths College, University of London, to show how women have used fashion and design to solve problems, smash stereotypes, and have adventures.
The free event will be held on the evening of 15 November at the Club for Acts and Actors. Audiences are invited to come along and see original patents brought to life, including a Victorian lunchbox and muff combo, an Edwardian life-saving device for sea voyages, and an array of secret compartments in everything from bags and bustles to hats and hooped skirts. It will be of particular interest to anyone who is interested in the history of clothing, sportswear, domestic labour and women’s fashion. It will also feature a performance from award-winning cabaret performer Ada Campe (Dr Paxton).
Speaking of the event, Dr Paxton said:
“It was great to have a commission from Theatre and Circus at the Glastonbury Festival this year to work with my longtime collaborator Rebecca Mordan from Scary Little Girls and to make new work around the fascinating research that the Politics of Patents project at Goldsmiths College is doing.
We were able to share some of the radical clothing inventions Dr Kat Jungnickel and her team have found in the patent archives and bring them to life for the Glastonbury cabaret stage.
Now we’re bringing this work to the Being Human festival and giving audiences a chance to see up close the incredible bespoke costumes and props that were made by the team and invite them to think about the history of women’s work from a new perspective.”
Pockets of Power! is an original concept from Rebecca Mordan (Scary Little Girls), Dr Kat Jungnickel (Politics of Patents) and Central’s Dr Naomi Paxton.
This is Dr Paxton’s fourth collaboration with Cornwall based production hub Scary Little Girls for the Being Human Festival, and each has involved the creation of bespoke performance pieces and an ensemble of actors in site-specific locations. Previous collaborations have included A Particular Theatre: Shakespeare, Suffragists and Soldiers with Dr Ailsa Grant-Ferguson from the University of Brighton (2016); Women and War: The West End and the Western Front which was part of the UK Parliament Vote 100 project (2017); and Embrace the Base: Living Legacies of Greenham Women (2020).
Dr Paxton also took part in the 2019 Being Human Festival with Different Stages, in which Central staff and Research Students spoke about their research. You can view videos from this event on YouTube.
Find out more about the Being Human Festival by visiting its website.
You can learn more about Dr Paxton’s research on Series 3, Episode 1 of the Discover Central podcast or by visiting her website.