WORKHOUSE TO OURHOUSE A COLLABORATIVE COMMUNITY PROJECT WITH SHUFFLE IN ST CLEMENTS EXPLORING THE HERITAGE AND WEALTH OF HUMAN HISTORY FROM THE BEGINNINGS AS AN INSTITUTION AND NOW AS A CREATIVE SHARED SPACE. WITH SUPPORT FROM THE HERITAGE LOTTER Y ; SHUFFLE, QUEEN MARY UNIVERSITY, EAST SIDE COMMUNITY HERITAGE + LOCAL PEOPLE CREATED AN EXHIBITION, A SERIES OF ENTERTAINING EVENINGS WITH FILM AND PERFORMANCE, AN ONLINE ORAL HISTORY WITHIN THE WALLS OF THE FORMER ST CLEMENTS HOSPITA L - TRANSFORMED A SPACE WHICH WAS ONCE ABOUT ISOLATION INTO ONE OF CONNECTION, MEANING + LEARNING.
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8/11/2019 ST CLEMENTS: WORKHOUSE TO OUR HOUSE report.
The exhibition was compiled and designed by the Shuffle team who had been working in the
grounds of the derelict, former hospital ‘St Clements’ in Mile End for the past year. Shuffle was
always concerned with the history of the building - the impact it had on individual lives and the
wider societal understandings that informed the institution initially as a Workhouse, then as an
Infirmary and finally as a Psychiatric Hospital - until it closed in 2005.
Because of the relatively recent closure there were still many people in the area who had
worked there or been patients there, as well as many people who were curious about what went
on in there. In our previous events, namely a film festival and a weekend exploring ‘the mind’
and mental illness there had been much interest by local people and others to gain a fruther
understanding of the history of the building and to address this directly.
Shuffle exists to work within spaces and communities and to make places in the city more ac-
cessible and culturally inclusive through direct use and interaction. At St Clements we set out to
do this with the Heritage Lottery Grant - with a specific conecentratuion on the heritage of the
building and bringing it (in its dereliction) to a standard of use, sufficient to hold a high quality
exhibition and to host evenings of events that captured the public’s imaginiation and explored
the theme more deeply. To do this we chose to focus on the large, formal room which after
development will become the main community space and transform it into an informative and
beautifully presented ‘ Community Living Room’. We worked with local organisations Mile EndFilms, East Side Community Heritage, Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park and Queen Mary
University as well as many old patients and staff to further our programm
As well as delving deep into the history of St Clements, we took this opportunity to further
connect with the history of the surrounding area with a series of walks. For the opening of the
exhibition we worked with a Cordon Bleu trained chef to re-create the Workhouse Kitchen. The
surrounding rooms were dressed by a set designer in the tradition of the workhouse aesthetic
and the community living room became a place for performances, music and talks. For the other
evenings the proceedings were run by Mile End Films, and a short film festival was curated,
along with other comedy and cu lural acts and a presentation on ‘Psychogeography’ by IanSinclair. The following pages document this weel of happenings, which were wamrly recieved by
the community and well attended by the local community and beyond.
In addition to the live events, the reserach and presentation of the first comprehensive history
of St Clements in Mile End, we arranged for an oral history recording booth to be set up in the
exhibition and we recorded the histories of past staff and patients for our online archives. We
also created a contemplative ‘Memory Room’ for visitors to record their memories of St Clem-
ents and their feelings and/or reactions to the exhibition and events in a written format which
we compiled into a book.
Portraits of former patients and staff that accompanied the walls of the oral
history recordings room. Many new oral histories were recorded during the
exhibition from visitors stopping by and the space prompting old memories
8/11/2019 ST CLEMENTS: WORKHOUSE TO OUR HOUSE report.