Helen Cammock, Sonia Boyce, Rory Pilgrim and Ilona Sagar
Serpentine Gallery/London Borough of Barking and Dagenham
31 March – 29 May 2022

Radio Ballads is the culmination of a three-year series of collaborative commissions exploring stories about labour and who cares for whom, and in what way. Over the past three years, Helen Cammock, Sonia Boyce, Rory Pilgrim and Ilona Sagar have collaborated with social workers, carers, organisers, and communities. Four films and bodies of research have emerged from these long-term artistic processes. The work will show simultaneously from tomorrow at the Serpentine Gallery and the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham

Helen Cammock’s project presents intersectional dialogues that look at individual and collective power, asking us to consider where we sit within the social and political spaces we inhabit. Based on ideas of resistance and resilience in everyday life, Helen invites those that work in adult social care and youth offending teams, as well as people that use those services, to collaborate on a conversation that focuses on how we survive, endure, overcome, fight back and reach possible resolutions.

This project marks the anniversary of the 1970 Equal Pay Act and the momentum for change created by the Dagenham Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968. The original Radio Ballads were produced by musicians Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, working with radio producer Charlie Parker to make a series for the BBC, focusing on workers’ experiences and issues.

Book Works published Helen Cammock’s 2017 Moveable Bridge project – available here.