Established in 1996, Kids Company is a charity which provides support for children with severe behavioural, emotional and social difficulties resulting from significant levels of trauma and neglect.
That support includes everything from hot meals, conversation and counselling, to opportunities in education, sports and art. Surviving mostly through private funding, Kids Company works in 32 inner-city schools across London, as well as at its own drop-in centre in Camberwell and an educational institute for older kids called the Urban Academy in Southwark. All of which sounds great, but for most of us, it’s another world, a million miles away from our own experience. Which is where the exhibition in Shoreditch Town Hall comes in.
The full title of the exhibition is ‘Demons and Angels – Does It Have To Be This Way?’ This provides a rough theme for the work therein, questioning the media’s portrayal of children as either vicious amoral gnomes or sweetly innocent cherubim, wondering how polarised our society has become and how much we really know about our children. The work has been produced by 500 inner-city London kids, guided by a small team of professional artists and Kids Company staff. Also featured is work from ‘privileged teenagers’, raising questions about the nature of having and not having. For example, is tossing money at your child and sending them to a private school enough to stop the little angel having to wrestle demons of their own?
The resulting work is astounding. It ranges in tone from the horrifically explicit – such as one boy’s installation mirroring his life as a male prostitute – to the fun and uplifting – such as the ‘Orchestra of the Ghetto’, an entire room given over to making music and sculpture from bits of junk and discarded pianos. We spoke to Valentino in the music and noise room. Valentino has been working with Kids Company for two and a half years and specialises in drama and music, helping kids perform role plays and stage puppet shows. He says that this room, when it’s full of kids using the interactive noise-making machines, can be deafening. He points out the ‘electro-manic caterpillar’ – so-called by the seven-year-old who created it – with all the pride of a doting parent. He points to a slightly disturbing mask-type painting on a dark back wall. ‘Children like to make scary things,’ he says. Valentino is in no doubt as to the therapeutic effects of giving kids the opportunity to express themselves through art and music. ‘There is very strong magic in here,’ he adds.
There is lots of confessional work in the exhibition, lots of text with bald declarations of what life is and what it means, much of which has the same kind of shocking and poignant appeal of the Post Secret project. There is a Wish Tree, which the public are invited to add to. There is poetry, there are dedications, there is damnation and forgiveness. This is part of a piece called ‘In the Beginning’, which – as far as our interpretation is concerned at least – questions the part religion plays in the systematic abuse of children.
This is a detail from a sprawling collaboration called ‘Seeking the Poetry Within’:
There is a small room given over to an installation called ‘My Mother’s a Rolling Pin’. This is the background:
‘When this young boy and his brothers were small their mother used to starve them, leave them in the house and disappear. The neighbours opened the cat flap and threw cupcakes in. Despite the abuse, the neglect, and the abandonment, the parent remains deeply loved. It’s a paradoxical position to be so profoundly in need and dependent upon the very person who is abusing you. The rolling pin can make cake, but it can also batter to draw blood. This is their mother all in one.’
What makes this particular piece one of the most haunting of the entire exhibition is the accompanying audio track. A trippy blend of nursery rhyme and hip hop on permanent loop with children’s voices repeating endlessly, ‘You’re not here’.
There is the labyrinthine basement of the Town Hall itself, the dank and flaking walls and disused toilets and sinks of which are incorporated into many of the installations to chilling effect. There are skulls and shoes and masks and smiling mouths. There are three floors of scary, startling and touching stuff. There is even a fashion label. There is far too much to see in the hour we had to spend there.
There are four poster-size photographs of various cloudscapes next to a caption which reads, ‘So much sadness is wrinkling the sky’.
This exhibition is heart-breaking. Yet at the same time, it manages to be uplifting. Just the very fact that these kids have survived the damage and neglect inflicted upon them – or are surviving it – and have been given this opportunity to express themselves, is something extremely positive, and something you find yourself clinging to as some of the darker exhibits start to tear at your innards and prick your conscience. The exhibition is also testament to the empowerment afforded by creativity. Through making this art, broken children have begun rebuilding themselves.
We asked Elizabeth Rodgers of Kids Company what she’d like people to take away from the exhibition. She told us that she hopes the exhibition will start a debate about the way we treat our children – the way they’re treated in the media and perceived by everyone else. She also hopes that the issues that these kids are addressing are brought more keenly into the public awareness. Rather than just crossing their fingers and hoping a debate might ensue however, Kids Company have already organised a conference for October. Called ‘No Bullshit: What Matters to Every Child’, the conference will be populated by policy and decision makers, those who can actually make a difference to the way children are treated. We’ll keep you posted when we hear more.
Finally, please don’t leave this review thinking that ‘Demons and Angels’ is good merely because it’s worthy, and because it gives mistreated a kids a chance to heal. It’s not. It’s also good because it’s full of images, ideas and emotions which are striking, powerful and incredibly affecting. There are some very talented kids at this show, and in most cases it seems clear that much of what drives them is their pain. It reminds us of a line from a Leonard Cohen song: ‘There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’ It’s sad for sure. It’s heart-breaking, as we mentioned. But it’s also enormously inspiring. Sometimes you forget how astonishing human beings can be. ‘Demons and Angels’ reminds you.
As Valentino pointed out, there is indeed very strong magic in here.
First published July 2007.
