Creative Fellowship 2022-23

Tom Stockley's practice is multidisciplinary, incorporating elements of spoken word, theatre, film-making, digital design and social engagement. They are interested in questioning social structures, building communities and reflecting on human identity and collective experience. Pop culture, humour and the every day are woven into their work, that can appear everywhere from community centres to comedy nights.

Tom collaborated with Dr Natalie Ohana from the University of Exeter Law School. Together they worked with undergraduate students on the module 'Law, Testimony and Trauma'. This project-based, research-led module is aimed at developing knowledge on the relationship between law, testimony and trauma. The module concentrates on traumatic events related to social oppression, such as racism, sexism, classism and xenophobia. Through conducting research projects as part of the module, the students examine the roles legal systems play in sustaining or changing the socio-political conditions that enable traumatic events to take place.

Below you discover more about how their Creative Fellowship unfolded.

In early December 2022 Tom joined Dr Ohana and students for a seminar as part of the 'Law, Testimony and Trauma' module on the University's Streatham campus. Tom spoke to the students to find out more about the legal cases they had chosen and started to consider the nature of the cases. Below are some images taken during that seminar which show Tom cutting and pasting text as a method of making sense of some of the issues which were being explored. You can see some of those initial creative experiments created in that seminar underneath the photographs.

Thanks to Tom’s participation in the module and knowing that they have the experience of working with communities to express, through art, social and political ideas, Dr Ohana felt that the last seminar for the students could be dedicated to expressing their research projects and the process of conducting it, through a collage. You can see an online exhibition featuring a selection of some of the student collages and the legal cases which inspired their artworks here.

Following a period of reading, research and the development of the initial collage and writing work (above), Tom created four poems based on four of the case studies covered in the December seminar they attended(the Aberfan landslide, the Hillsborough disaster, the New Cross massacre and Grenfell Tower). The below poems were created from legal notes, witness statements and some research source material.

Below you can see collages and digital edits made between 2022 – 2023, reflecting on the themes of protest, power and hidden violence.

Exhibition at Exeter Phoenix

Inspired by his collaboration, Tom created a large-scale collage installation at the Exeter Phoenix from 3rd June - 2nd July 2023.

The exhibition reflects upon upon four historical case studies within the context of law, testimony, trauma, community and justice, as well as incorporating Tom's own lived experience of the Bristol Protests in 2021. The four case studies included were: The Aberfan Landslide (1966), The New Cross Massacre (1981), The Hillsborough Disaster (1989) and The Grenfell Fire (2017). Seemingly disconnected, Tom and Natalie have woven an academic and artistic web through these tragedies, highlighting the importance of the communities at the heart of them in their fight for justice and critically examining the role that the state, the legal system and the police play in matters of justice and testimony.

By examining and reassembling source material such as court notes, legal guides, eyewitness accounts, lyrics and essays, Tom sketches out their criticisms of an ongoing violence that is perpetuated by those in power, often hidden behind the softness of flowers and platitudes in the aftermath of preventable disasters and acts of oppression. Drawing upon a history of anti-fascist philosophy, radical communities and counter-cultural material, this work questions the truth behind atrocity, the knowledge behind the trauma and the reasons why justice is so rarely won by the communities that suffer most.

Arts and Culture Creative Fellowships

Arts and Culture Creative Fellowships offer creative practitioners the opportunity to engage with innovative academics and professional services staff across the University of Exeter’s colleges and campuses.

Rather than being a residency, these opportunities are described as placements. The creative practitioner is a peer, opening up new approaches and conversations with the University hosts while developing and enriching their own creative practice. This scheme encourages mutually beneficial exchange, where both the host and the creative practitioner gain new insights and potential ways of working.