Heart N Soul archive

This collection is awaiting cataloguing. The following is a temporary description that may change in the future:

Records created and collected by Heart N Soul, including:
- Written documents created by Heart N Soul’s core team
- Photographs and recordings of performances and tours
- Flyers and posters
- Annual reports
- Press cuttings
- Books and comic published by Heart N Soul
- Music recordings by Heart N Soul artists.

These records tell us about:
- How Heart N Soul started and has developed
- The Heart N Soul community
- Heart N Soul’s aims and strategy
- Heart N Soul’s music and theatre performances and tours in the UK and abroad
- The Beautiful Octopus Club
- Squidz Club
- Training and workshops offered by Heart N Soul
- Heart N Soul’s funding sources
- Heart N Soul’s marketing and promotional activities
- Heart n Soul artists and their music, including Fish Police, Lizzie Emeh and many others

This collection also includes the Big 30 archive (Acc 2460) – Digital project records and outputs created as part of Heart N Soul’s 30th anniversary celebrations in 2017.
[Abridged from Heart N Soul website, 2019]
What Is The Big 30?
The Big 30 Archive celebrates 30 years of award-winning creative arts company Heart n Soul. As part of the celebrations, people with and without learning disabilities have been recorded talking about their lives, creating a record of learning disability culture. They also had their portraits taken with photographer Franklyn Rodgers. What's the aim of The Big 30 Archive?
It is the first of its kind where people with learning disabilities talk about their lives in their own way. It gives everyone the opportunity to see, discover and hear previously hidden stories that are part of history. It explores how disabled and non-disabled people can be and work together. The archive also helps to build a wider picture of the different communities and the on-going social changes happening in South-East London.

For more information about the archive's contents please email collections@wellcomecollection.org.

1980s-2020

Uncatalogued: 1,139 digital items (23 GB), 32 transfer boxes, 9 archive boxes, 23 oversize folders

Acc 2460 (Big 30 archive) donated in October 2018; Acc 2716 donated in May 2023.

[Abridged from Heart N Soul website, 2019] Heart n Soul is an award-winning creative arts company. They believe in the talents and power of people with learning disabilities. They offer a range of opportunities for people to take part, train in a new skill, or develop their artistic talents. Artists and participants share their work live, recorded or online for as many different people to enjoy as possible. Heart n Soul's vision is of people with a learning disability living full and equal lives with independence, freedom and pride.
Heart n Soul grew out of working together and experimenting. Musician Mark Williams, the Artistic Director/Chief Executive at the time of writing (2019), wanted to explore new ways of music making and using art to make a difference. In 1984, he started running creative sessions with a group of people with learning disabilities who went to the local day service, The Mulberry Centre.
Once the group was given the chance to make music together with Mark, original songs flowed out. The Mulberry Crew moved into The Albany, re-naming itself Heart n Soul, based on the title of one of Pino Frumiento's (co-founder of Heart n Soul) first songs. Theatre practitioner Alix Parker joined the company and the group started performing to an audience creating original shows and stories as well as music. Heart n Soul was always about working towards professional productions – not art therapy.
The group made an album, toured shows within disability rights festivals in the UK and Europe and started to attract interest within the arts and disability worlds. Further groups were set up in the model of this Original Company with a theatre and a music practitioner as what used to be called 'tutors', and a training scheme was launched to raise skills levels on and backstage.
Whilst away on tour in Belgium, on a night off, the Original Company was not allowed into a nightclub in the hotel where they were staying. The artists were angry, they decided to turn this into a force for change by creating a place where people with a learning disability could go to party, to meet friends and even better, to see performances by people like them. Because of this The Beautiful Octopus Club was born in 1995, and shortly afterwards The Squidz Club for young people was set up too. Heart n Soul carried on touring nationally and internationally to regional theatres, major festivals such as Glastonbury and to schools to deliver its education programmes for special and mainstream students.
Heart n Soul's way of working has been used by a range of groups wanting to achieve similar goals, over fifty events have been set up based on The Beautiful Octopus Club, some by us, some with our help and some on their own.
Since 2003 Heart N Soul have been making sure that people with learning disabilities are involved in every area of the company's work including production, office and leadership roles.
In 2010 Mark and Pino were awarded MBE's for their services to disability arts.
2012 was an extraordinary year for Heart n Soul. They worked on their biggest project to date, The Dean Rodney Singers, commissioned for the 2012 London Cultural Olympiad, held their biggest ever Beautiful Octopus Club with up to 3,000 people celebrating learning disability culture at London's Southbank Centre and our artists Lizzie Emeh, The Fish Police and Kali Perkins all performed at the 2012 London Paralympic Games opening ceremony.
As part of Heart N Soul's 30th anniversary celebrations in 2017, people with and without learning disabilities were recorded talking about their lives, creating an archive of learning disability culture.
Heart N Soul was registered as a chairty in 1993. In 2018 They became the third residents of The Hub, a 'transdisciplinary research centre' at Wellcome Collection.

WT Acc 2624: Physical and digital records created as part of Heart N Soul's residency at The Hub at Wellcome Collection (Oct 2018 - Jun 2021); a research project exploring ideas around human value, difference and love from the perspective of people with learning disabilities and autism. 2018-2021. 1 outsize box, 2 outsize folders and 897 digital files.

CC-BY

This collection is currently uncatalogued and cannot be ordered online. Requests to view uncatalogued material are considered on a case by case basis. Please contact collections@wellcomecollection.org for more details.

Direct transfer from Heart N Soul.