Radio Ballads, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, New Town Culture and Serpentine Galleries 2019–2024
Helen Cammock, Bass Notes and SiteLines: The Voice as a Site of Resistance and The Body as a Site of Resilience, Performance at Barking Town Hall. Courtesy Helen Cammock. Photo: Jimmy Lee.
A three-year artistic programme developed by Serpentine Galleries, which I commissioned on behalf of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham to work within adult social care services, as part of New Town Culture.
Through this commission, the Serpentine Galleries worked with four artists — Sonia Boyce, Helen Cammock, Rory Pilgrim and Ilona Sagar — bringing significant resources and institutional expertise into a municipal context in outer east London. New Town Culture grounded the programme through collaborations with local organisations including Adult Social Care, Barking and Dagenham Youth Dance and Green Shoes Arts, ensuring the work was rooted in the borough's own cultural life.
The programme culminated in a simultaneous exhibition at Barking Town Hall and Serpentine Galleries in 2022, and included Rory Pilgrim's Rafts, which went on to receive a Turner Prize nomination. The project was documented in the publication Radio Ballads: Songs for Change (Serpentine Galleries, 2025).
Writing in Art Monthly, Maria Walsh described the collaboration as showing how "both social care and art institutions are not only rethinking what and how they provide... but also how they can learn from one another" (Art Monthly, 2022).
Rory PIlgrim, Rafts, Radio Ballads, Installation view, Serpentine North, 2022. Courtesy Rory Pilgrim. Photo: George Darrell.
Radio Ballads: Songs for Change publication 2025. Courtesy Serpentine Galleries.