IF you think of Clarks of Street, the first thing that comes to mind will be shoes – but there is so much more to the story of this family and the Somerset village where they have lived and worked for centuries.
From prehistory to contemporary art, the Shoemakers Museum tells the story of a family that has made its mark on so many aspects of life in Somerset and the country from fossils to footwear.
Family members ranged from a noted collector and early palaeontologist, Arthur Gillett, to a generation of women who joined the fight for women’s suffrage. Prominent family members, including the Priestman sisters, Helen PB Clark, Alice Clark and Cato Clark (nee Smuts), supported the suffrage campaign from the mid-19th century until women were given the right to vote in the UK in 1928.
Aspects of these different stories were woven into a moving and thought-provoking music and dance installation at the museum, next to Clark’s Village shopping centre, which has just celebrated its first birthday.
Created by Frome-based composer Helen Ottaway and movement and interdisciplinary artist Melanie Thompson, Step by Step was an immersive and involving response to a ground floor corridor and the parallel upstairs corridor in the museum. The installation, created as a performance for horizontal spaces, draws connections between Somerset’s prehistoric past and the present.
The audience/viewer was invited to walk along both corridors, look at the photographs, including suffragists, illustrations of shoes and objects including drawings, posters and historic events, and read the artists’ notes linking their work with the exhibits. This was followed by a dance performance with Melanie Thompson and young dancer Jessica Tizard exploring four phases – childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age (and death).
The exhibition and performance were accompanied by a soundscape created by Alastair Goolden, a long-time collaborator with composer Helen Ottaway, and cellist Ali Robinson (pictured) playing music by Helen, at one point incorporating Dame Ethel Smyth’s March of the Women, the anthem of the suffragette movement.
The Clark family has for more than 400 years been one of the most prominent Quaker families in Somerset as well as being philanthropists, anti-slavery campaigners and suffragists. The museum collections highlight the Clark family and business interests in education dating back to the early 1800s. Other papers show the family’s anti-slavery and anti-racist sentiment including production of free-labour-produced cotton.
* Shoulder to Shoulder was the name of a landmark BBC drama series which told the story of the Pankhursts and the other suffragettes. First shown in 1974, the series, which starred Sian Phillips as Emmeline Pankhurst, was re-released on BBC iPlayer in 2024, to mark its 50th anniversary.
Pictured is cellist Ali Robinson, a Womens Suffrage badge worn by one of the Clark family campaigners, and the neon artwork in the museum foyer.