Beyond The Scroll
Real art is alive and well, and it’s plotting the fightback in South Yorkshire. Shit Tech watch out, Donny’s here.
The walk from Doncaster station is like a hundred traipses through a hundred towns: streets long-thronged with neighbours now lie fallow, quietly waiting to see what the future holds.
On an early spring Thursday morning in 2026 you’d be forgiven for thinking ‘not much’, the boarded-shops of the city centre barely less busy than those optimistically open. But Donny knows different.
The Tour of Broken Britain tick-boxes are all there of course if you look up. Stunning, empty deco department store. ✅
Architectural signposts to bygone grandeur. ✅
Baffling public realm ‘enhancements’. ✅
Creeping dread that everything you love about where you live is being stripped away by a bunch of psychopathic capitalists who couldn’t give a flying f*ck about your town. ✅
But as you make your way along streets with names that now barely hint at history – St Sepulchre Gate, Hall Gate – looking down is way more interesting. For snaking along the High Street is a history of Roman Danum, of medieval Cair Daun, one of 28 British cities in the 9th century epic History of The Britons.
This used to be an alternative Ermine Street, the Roman route from London to Lincoln and York. Later it was part of the Great North Road and then the A1, until the A1(M) bypassed it. Donny’s been here before: served, then swerved by new technologies.
The 2026 tech upgrade is plain to see when Doncaster comes out to play at the weekend: the city is younger and browner, new demographics attracted by jobs at the local logistics firms. Who knows how long it will last. 40 minutes west of here, Barnsley’s been announced as the UK’s first government-backed Tech Town. The council are looking forward to being “a national blueprint for how AI can improve everyday life”. Given robots can now pick products off shelves and vehicles can drive themselves, presumably the people of Barnsley are looking forward to UBI and endless Iranian Lego videos. Where West Yorkshire leads, South will surely follow.
Which brings us back to Hall Gate, where rebellion hides in plain sight at number 60. What at first glance appears to be just another high street frontage is in fact a shop window for a better story for humanity.
When we first visited, in May last year, it was Apartheid Apartments, Darren Cullen’s brilliant dystopian Estate Agents. When you go, who knows what mayhem you’ll see. For this shop is the home of ArtBomb, Doncaster's experimental arts festival & pop-up art space. And what a magical place it is too, not least as it is housed by Britain’s most radical dissenters, the Unitarians.
Last week ArtBomb put on Beyond The Scroll, a day of conversation and exploration of “how socially-engaged practice can reclaim focus and meaning in a digital age of distraction”.
Here’s ArtBomb’s Creative Director, Mike Stubbs:
The scroll used to be sacred text — doctrine, instruction, order. Now it’s the feed. Endless, algorithmic, persuasive. It scripts authenticity, packages outrage and joy, instrumentalises connection. It tells us how to perform ourselves. It feels fluid, but it’s another orthodoxy — softer, more seductive, a kind of cultural managerialism.
ArtBomb sits awkwardly against that smoothness.
Beyond The Scroll took over the Unitarian chapel that sits on a courtyard tucked behind the shop. It’s the kind of thing that should happen in more chapels, on more courtyards, off more high streets in more towns.
Actually, I’d go far further: rather than chapels and churches finding the odd slot for community, good causes and art, how wonderful would Britain be if it was the other way round? What if the thousands of half-empty places of worship were in fact thriving neighbourhood hubs, filled with food and fun and art and laughter? What if Church did the decent thing and handed their spaces over to be of service to neighbourhoods first, God second? Community Arts Centres that find the odd slot for worship.
What might that mean for neighbourhoods the length and breadth of Britain crying out for third spaces? What indeed might it mean for religious organisations? Both, after all, are in search of connection, only the church seems ever-more like that drawer we all have, the one filled with proprietary cables rendered redundant by Bluetooth and WiFi. Maybe that’s why Doncaster Unitarians seem so at home sharing their space with such radical types. They are the open source wing of religion.
Beyond The Scroll was blessed with inspiration. From countercultural crocheters Mother Hookers to Sally Kindberg’s Museum of Dust; the Little Anarchist Bookshop to Matt Redfern’s painting this was creativity way beyond both the scroll and the highfalutin Art World – and all the better for it. It’s the kind of Art Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse talk of so eloquently in their book What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory.
The kind of art that could actually change the world, because it’s made where people’s worlds actually are.
We heard about a forthcoming pop-up in the ArtBomb shop, The Anti-Social Housing Agency which will work with Donny locals to explore social housing outcomes that serve people not profit. Eelyn Lee gave a fascinating insight into collaborative art practice and her work with East Asian histories in Sheffield. And Darren Cullen returned with a hilarious romp through several decades of running rings round the authorities. The room explored what role art might play in resisting, given governments’ successive efforts to render protest impossible.
The day ended with the unforgettable sight of Donny youth donning Dianne Wells crochet masks to discuss AI. And in an instant, anyone over the age of about 17 realised they Don’t. Have. A. Clue. about what’s actually going on in the world. We’re so cooked.
Until we’re not. Because it’s days like these that remind you that the antidote to the scroll – to The Shitshow – is meeting real people in real places and plotting real plots. It’s thinking that’s underpinning all the work we’re doing on the Fête of Britain, so of course we’d say that. But some days just hit harder. Thank you ArtBomb. 🙏
Back in That London, the next meet-ups of Hard Art will be examining how art changes us and the world. Pondering that was what led to Hard Art in the first place. Three-and-a-half years on, we could learn a lot from Doncaster.
Over to Mike: “In a culture addicted to seamless feeds and controlled environments, there’s something quietly defiant about insisting on art as interference — in the middle of a loud, imperfect, very real street — and refusing to let the script, sacred or digital, have the final word so that conversation can resume and the small child (pictured in lead image above) gets a chance to make eye contact with the father on his phone.”
Hey! Festival, Manchester – St George’s Day, 23rd April, 2-8pm, Cross Street Chapel
If you are in Manchester tomorrow (Thursday 23 April) get down to the Cross Street Chapel (those Unitarians again!!) for the next instalment of Hey! Festival.
It’s a day celebrating books, art, songs and political heroes (especially women). Featuring ballad singer Jenn Reid, Costa Book of the Year winner Monique Roffey, and many more including The Empathy Museum’s Ear of Britain. Celebrating faith and art, reckoning with national identity, and taking part in free writing workshops throughout the day. The Hey! day ends with a live episode of Good Neighbours.
And if that’s not enough, you can Argue With A Woman!! Here’s how the very argumentative Anouchka Grose got on in Doncaster last summer:
Get your tickets here:
Elsewhere in Absurdity
The Absurd Family expands as our Sophie moves on to work full time with our wonderful collaborators Nothing But Love. Launched at the half million-strong Together march, NBL are putting music at the heart of everything we want to build for a better story of Britain. All the best Soph! 🥰 We can’t wait to see what mischief we can co-create.
Clare is on a whistlestop UK tour filming stories of everyday neighbourhood brilliance with Humanity Project. She also managed to squeeze-in a visit to the new V&A East to see our dear friend Es’s new work The Everythingists.
Clive headed to Cambridge to deliver his revolutionary lecture Design Is Protest. If you want someone to rabble-rouse, hit us up!
Maddy’s filming the most brilliant/bonkers-sounding film – chicken foot jewellery, pigeons, folk weirdness and Soho – we cannot wait to see the results!!
John submitted a Centre for Social Resilience research bid to the AHRC Design Generators call.
Tracey’s recce-ing Wigan for a future Fête of Britain (and don’t forget it’s Ffair Cymru in Swansea on 2 May!)
[pauses for breath] Jesus we’re busy!
And we all had an amazing time at the Fête of Barking!!!!!
