Conflict with the Burnley community

During Welfare State’s residency in Burnley, the local Council rented them a disused quarry to house the collection of lorries, land-rover and caravans which made up the Welfare State circus. The troupe of contemporary artists living on a quarry weren’t immediately welcomed by the local community, as John Fox describes below.

John Fox, Engineers of the Imagination:

‘It’s a repressed working-class town, more so than many. I also think we looked like a bunch of freaks who lived on a rubbish tip. … People thought that we were hippies and our image and the kind of work we did was sometimes very alienating. We wore heavy make-up, we did very ‘progressive’ performances, we didn’t actually go about it in the right way.’

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