{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O1274995"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1274995/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2014GW4663/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2014GW4663/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"low","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2014GW4663","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2015HK1068","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":null},"record":{"systemNumber":"O1274995","accessionNumber":"E.571-2013","objectType":"Poster","titles":[{"title":"Get together and get things done","type":"generic title"}],"summaryDescription":"","physicalDescription":"Portrait poster advertising the Tower Hamlets Federation of Tenants. The poster shows a black and white photograph of a crowd of people with their backs to the camera, looking at an black of flats. A paintbrush creates a curved line across the poster, and picks features out in the primary colours of blue, red and yellow. ","artistMakerPerson":[{"name":{"text":"Minnion, Tony","id":"AUTH328115"},"association":{"text":"designer","id":"x36960"},"note":""}],"artistMakerOrganisations":[{"name":{"text":"Basement Community Arts Workshop","id":"AUTH327950"},"association":{"text":"printer","id":"x30811"},"note":""}],"artistMakerPeople":[],"materials":[{"text":"paper","id":"x30308"},{"text":"plastic laminate","id":"AAT14579"}],"techniques":[{"text":"screen printing","id":"AAT53281"}],"materialsAndTechniques":"Screenprint poster on paper encapsulated in plastic laminate","categories":[{"text":"Posters","id":"THES252963"},{"text":"Prints","id":"THES48903"}],"styles":[],"collectionCode":{"text":"PDP","id":"THES48595"},"images":["2014GW4663","2015HK1068"],"imageResolution":"low","galleryLocations":[{"current":{"text":"CA014","id":"THES413430"},"free":"","case":"","shelf":"","box":""}],"partTypes":[[{"text":"poster","id":"AAT27221"}]],"contentWarnings":[{"apprise":"No","note":""}],"placesOfOrigin":[{"place":{"text":"London","id":"x28980"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"productionDates":[{"date":{"text":"1984","earliest":"1984-01-01","latest":"1984-12-31"},"association":{"text":"made","id":"x28654"},"note":""}],"associatedObjects":[],"creditLine":"Given by the Greenwich Mural Workshop.","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"79.3","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"28/11/2013","earliest":"2013-11-28","latest":"2013-11-28"},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"53.6","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"28/11/2013","earliest":"2013-11-28","latest":"2013-11-28"},"part":"","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"Dimensions include plastic laminate.","marksAndInscriptions":[{"content":"Let's get together and get things done ","inscriber":{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""}},"date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"description":"","interpretation":"","language":"","medium":"","method":"","position":"","script":"","translation":"","transliteration":"","type":"","note":"poster headline "},{"content":"Tower Hamlets Federation of Tenants","inscriber":{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""}},"date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"description":"","interpretation":"","language":"","medium":"","method":"","position":"","script":"","translation":"","transliteration":"","type":"","note":"Across bottom of poster"},{"content":"Printed at The Basement Project 236 Cable Street E1 for THFT Oxford House Derbyshire E2 7396779","inscriber":{"name":{"text":"","id":""},"association":{"text":"","id":""}},"date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"description":"","interpretation":"","language":"","medium":"","method":"","position":"","script":"","translation":"","transliteration":"","type":"","note":"At the bottom of the poster, in a small white border."}],"objectHistory":"Poster featured in the Greenwich Mural Workshop's 1986 exhibition 'Printing is Easy...?'\r\n","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"Poster, designed by Tony Minnion and produced by Tower Hamlets Tenants Assoociation with the Basement Community Arts Workshop, London, 1984. ","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"From the exhibition by the Greenwich Mural Workshop 'Printing is Easy...?', 1986\r\n\r\nTranscript of conversation between Tony Minnion and Benjamin Selig on 1 March 2023:\r\n\r\nTony Minnion  0:21  \nI'm actually I moved out of London 20 years ago, I live in Cornwall now.\n\nSo I but I still work as a as a community artists, which is essentially what I was doing when that poster was created.\n\nIt was as part of my first job after leaving college.\n\nBenjamin Selig  0:48  \nRight. Okay.\n\nTony Minnion  0:51  \nAnd, yeah, and I've worked my whole life as, as a community based artist. And I'm very much in in this. And\n\nBenjamin Selig  1:09  \nso were you were you quite heavily affiliated with basement community arts, were you just on this project,\n\nTony Minnion  1:16  \nwhat happened was I I had a studio in Limehouse. In an old factory, and I was really interested in power artists integrated into established working class or communities. That was, you know, whopping grown up on it was growing up at the time and it, it just wasn't integrating. It was just taking the cheap spaces. And so I was quite politically motivated at that point to, to find how myself as an artist can be useful in the community. And I ended up joining a group called the Doppler community poster project. Okay. And that was based in on the Isle of Dogs, and it was just at the point when Hessel time was transforming documents from, you know, because the dots are moved DESE. Yeah. The whole area was seen in on the auditoriums and to some extent in Nero was seen as a blank canvas for developers. Yeah, yeah. And what I got involved with a group that were GLC sponsored because it was at the height of government, Batchelor government on one side and Ken Livingstone on the other. So it was a political divide. GLC was sponsoring arts projects that addressed social issues, and we, we were set up, the project was set up by two artists called Pete on the marine Lisa. And they got me into work for them printing screen printing posters. So we were what we were doing was affiliating ourselves with local pressure groups and community groups and tenants groups to Trump sure that the voices of local people were considered in the redevelopment.\n\nBenjamin Selig  3:31  \nOkay. Okay. Right. And so, so in in that, how, how did that kind of come about who was involved in this in this poster? Was that just kind of you as community artists, or so the people who were\n\nTony Minnion  3:48  \nbasically because we were, we were linking with the Tower Hamlets Federation of tenants association with the group, I think that initiated that poster. Robert rates like the Greenland dock Action Group, which was about saving jobs in dodgeland areas. There was a joint document action group there was, you can imagine, there was a lot of different groups fighting to try and ensure they got their voice heard. And as part of that, the basement Arts Project was it was a community based screen printing an art project. It did grow, printing and printing. And then he actually had they had an alternate as a sort of alternative school there as well for people who are betting on in the mainstream educated. So that was kind of the sort of thing that existed and I see in the early 80s into A community based arts project. So we will linked with one another, we think to each other in the woman who ran the screen printing resource at the basement, shared my studio as well. So we we work together on on a number of different projects.\n\nBenjamin Selig  5:23  \nWas this produced at your studio or was this? \n\nTony Minnion  5:27  \nYeah it was, I think that poster was printed at the baseline. Okay. Because by then, because she'd moved to the basement. There was no point in paying rent to run a screen. What we were doing was community based. So we we, we I did my screen printing there. But I was also linked with we used to the artists that I worked with with the docklands campaign. We're hiring huge billboards and doing they're quite, they got quite well known for doing it, but they were doing big billboards trying to give a voice to the local peak, right.\n\nBenjamin Selig  6:11  \nWas this initially a big billboard or was it proposed for that or was it was a poster printed to go on Tower Hamlets poster boards? \n\nTony Minnion  6:24  \nOkay, the town council, the sorry, the Borough Council, were committed to giving tenants a voice so they supported I mean, they were quite a they were quite a radical Town Council as Borough Council. Sorry, if you can tell I've lived in Cornwall. All the councils are town councillors. But the Borough Council a town that's para was quite it was really committed to bringing in tenants voices. So the tenants the Federation of tenants associations met, I went to a meeting. They said we want we've been given these, the council we're going to pay for and distribute these posters all around the estates, all around Tower Hamlets trying to encourage people to to get involved in transforming their estates and being being more proactive. Yeah. You know, as in tenants groups. Okay, great. So that's, so they met with me as a representative and the doctrine, community posted project because and and then we went to the basement. And I worked with them to design the poster.\n\nBenjamin Selig  7:49  \nOkay, great, because yeah, from the research that we've got there as there's no understanding on our side, but you know, these posters were distributed on mass. They appear to be singular posters that have been produced for one campaign. So that's really interesting. \n\nTony Minnion  8:08  \nYeah. No, it was funny. Not en-masse. It was it was good for a community. Oh, yeah. We would have printed to the council and as well as their posters, which were going up saying, don't drop litter and, you know, whatever. Yeah. They were putting these posters up in in the around the notice boards around Tower Hamlets, so they got they got quite well distributed.\n\nBenjamin Selig  8:43  \nOkay, cool. And the actual design of the poster itself, are you able to expand a bit on that? \n\nTony Minnion  8:54  \nYeah, I've got the hardware I've got the poster if I had to look at it yesterday. You know, I was I was in my early 20s.\n\nBut it was a while what I did, as as being part of the Dockland community poster project, they, we did a lot of photos, we photographed a lot of demonstrations, gatherings, and community events. So we the photos used in it, were from will collage and montage. From photos of tenants gathering. I can't remember what it was now. It might have been protesting about rent increases or whatever it was, you know, there was so we had a whole archive Have people in a community groups? Sure, sure. So basically, in those days, the technology, as you can imagine, was fairly different. The question of printing the photos, and that a number of different photos onto film, and then cutting them up. And, and collaging it together.\n\nBenjamin Selig  10:30  \nAnd were they were the people involved in that making? Would that the design as well, was that primarily you or whatever kind of other volunteers, kind of other artists?\n\nTony Minnion  10:43  \nI was commissioned to do it. Okay. And then I remember doing some sketches I had, I think I had the idea of a paintbrush sweeping through. Yeah, that was a good idea at the time,\n\nBenjamin Selig  11:00  \nand what was the kind of idea behind the paint brush sweeping through?\n\nTony Minnion  11:09  \nWell, it was sort of transforming a, a fairly black and white and colourless environment into one colour. It was it was very bright. It was brightening it up at transit. It was about transforming place where people lived. And I think I would have had a few different design ideas. And I remember going to a tenants meeting, which was, and they had representatives from a number of different states like the burden. I can't remember the names of them all now. And they sort of looked at my designs and said, we'll have that one\n\nBenjamin Selig  11:55  \nOkay, were you were you kind of involved in the campaign in a way outside of the poster?\n\nTony Minnion  12:07  \nYeah. I mean, I was involved because of the docklands community poster project, worked across New Tower Hamlets.I was involved in as an artist in a lot of different I had to take my camera to a lot of different demonstrations, but also we initiated some, some different community. It's a community action. Like I think there was a Docklands Armada where we hired boats, put loads of local people in them. And it was all done in partnership with like, yeah. And then we failed up to Westminster with huge banners and stood stood up in the boats and wave them around. I mean, it was it was it was quite, there was a lot of action going on. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on then. Particularly the basement Arts Project was very tied up with the Bengali population that was establishing itself in, in the area at the time and supporting them. And there was, and it also was at the point where the National Front where it would been quite active. You know, it was so it was kind of it was quite a dynamic time. I mean, I don't know if you know, the basement. Where the basement Arts Project was, it was in the old Stepney Yeah. In Cable Street, in the old dirt Hall. And it was a huge mural of the Cable Street uprising. On the site. Oh,\n\nBenjamin Selig  14:00  \nyeah. When they marched through this, this \n\nTony Minnion  14:04  \nYeah. When the Fascists were, yeah. In the police and the fascists. It was, I don't know why history is rubbish. But it was it would have been one postwar would it was it pre war? I think it was pre war, because it was when a Mosley was around. Okay. So it was very it was just when the Fascists were rising in the late 40s. But it was a huge mobilisation of people to stop the fascist taking over cables, the stent. Anyway, that's a bit of a sidetrack.\n\nBenjamin Selig  14:49  \nThere vary. Yeah, it's quite relevant though, because it gives some context to you know, Stepney green as an area that you know, didn't You know, all of this activism didn't just come about in the 70s and 80s. So I think it is important. And, you know, that's part of what the kind of multiple voices that we're trying to tell them their story, you know, doesn't all just come about out of thin air, you know, these are the kind of legacies that have contended decades.\n\nTony Minnion  15:24  \nYeah. And actually, those areas like, because they don't lend areas, they had some of the early settlers, earliest settlements of us or Chinese communities and, and, of course, huge Jewish community and commercial, round and around there. I mean, it's multicultural, and it was one of the first parts of London to really establish itself. City but the, the poster itself, get together and get things done. I don't know if you know that. That a few. In 2018. It was lent to Manchester art gallery. Do you know about what?\n\nBenjamin Selig  16:13  \nYeah, I do recall.\n\nTony Minnion  16:15  \nBecause they, and they used it as the inspiration for the design, and the title of an exhibition that they had called get together and get things done, which was an exhibition celebrating. Celebrating activism, people. It was, it was around, it was 2018. So it was when a lot of the ecology movement was getting mobilised on social media. And the and in extinction, rebellion was getting established, black lives matter was happening. And so they, they put an Arctic an exhibition on celebrating different different contemporary moves towards people getting together and getting things done. And then they use the poster itself. They use the typography and the design. Yeah, and the whole exhibition, which was lovely, you know, it was nice for me. Can my ego for a minute, but you know, it was, but it was great that it had that secondary use, you know, yeah, that it went out of the museum, and actually sort of inspired something up there, but it was, apparently it was quite well attended the exhibition.\n\nBenjamin Selig  17:54  \nI mean, it's really, you know, it's a really inspiring period of time. A lot of my work has been, you know, looking into the kind of demolition and regeneration of, you know, the docklands projects in light of what's kind of going on in Stratford at the moment. And, you know, trying to create a conversation with local audiences, and, you know, situating kind of VNA among that, given that with it and heard about, you know, what's what's kind of going on in the local area? And how that, you know, reflects on kind of wider attitudes towards regeneration, redevelopment. Yeah, so, you know, it's really, really interesting talking to you and completely irrelevant, you know, the stuff with Manchester Art Gallery displaying and kind of also being inspired by the get together and get things done.\n\nTony Minnion  18:57  \nYeah. I mean, there was I did take some photos of a few other posters. We did at the time, that I can send you Ben if you like.\n\nBenjamin Selig  19:12  \nThat would be amazing.\n\nTony Minnion  19:15  \nA no airport in new poster. Right. And then I look at them all, I think, Oh, well. Yeah. Originally, I've never flown from them myself. But But, um, and there's, you know, there's. So that was new and based. And there was there's another one I did for the Tower Hamlets empty properties group, which was a campaign group. Working on filling the empty property together is massive. At that time, the council would really let the public housing sector Stop trying to ruin\n\nBenjamin Selig  20:01  \nYeah. Yeah. Did you feel like you were affecting kind of policy?\n\nTony Minnion  20:20  \nIt was a difficult time. I mean, to be honest, it's not dissimilar to now in that there was a real polarisation because especially within London because you had a left leaning JLC which was really quite radical and replace it as an hour. The the sort of support it gave for community or politically motivated artists was was was remarkable contemporary, what happened. But obviously, he also had a very powerful tool recoverable goblin.\n\nBenjamin Selig  21:05  \nYeah.\n\nTony Minnion  21:08  \nI mean, my experience of growing up then was just being you fight and not fighting, literally, but being out in the streets every every weekend sort of trying to stop this\n\nBenjamin Selig  21:25  \nthis bulldozer\n\nTony Minnion  21:30  \nthis bulldoze sort of sweeping through wood. And looking back at it retrospectively, it was hugely transformative time in terms I mean, the miners strike was happening at the time. So they were just you know, they were destroying the unions, left, right and centre and, and, and also what happened in Stratford and New England and Tower Hamlets. And they basically developers are just it's like they thought they discovered this empty canvas. Yeah. The people who lived there didn't matter. But I mean, if you imagine it in Docklands terms, of course, it was all about seaside. Sorry, Riverside views. You know, it was all about Riverside development. Yeah, I remember we were in this. We worked at one point in, in the Custom House on the entrance to the eyelid dock, which was really rough around there. The rest of it was a huge sort of brown field full of posts and bulldozers and dozers and surveyors, and then somebody turned up and said, Oh, they're gonna bring Bill Chicago banks are gonna go up this tower block, it's called Canary Wharf, and it's gonna be just there and we will look desolate. I'm thinking now about what's going to happen. But I mean, it almost we always blinked and it happened. Fast. Yeah. Because it was International. Finance, just prepared with governments just transforming a region. Yeah. And yet the people who live there were, you know, there. They, they'd only recently been put out of work as botlane work as darkness. Yeah.\n\nBenjamin Selig  23:26  \nYeah, completely. It's quite, you know, it's really startling. Especially kind of watching live footage of the time, when you're seeing the juxtaposition between this kind of new development people in estates that have been abandoned and really kind of cut out and looming presence that takes away any sunlight, and dustfilling the screen.\n\nTony Minnion  23:59  \nLike, I remember in on the other dogs, there was this this tenement block, which, you know, was really rundown, but you could, it was on the river edge. We thought it was on the river edge, knock it down. They just bought this massive block of flats between the terminal block and the river. So suddenly they're only view was sort of looking at this incredible, these incredible apartments that was so beyond any anybody's you know, means to own. And also very quickly, people moved in and there was just total separation.\n\nIt was very, it was very strange. There's still evidence of it now. Isn't that really?\n\nBenjamin Selig  24:55  \nTower Hamlets, is one of the most impoverished areas of London. Tower Hamlets and Newham had the highest levels of child poverty in the UK. And, you know, they're on the backs of the Docklands. They're not the Isle of Dogs itself. But yeah, it's completely extreme. And it's done very little to consider the local community. You know, that's, that was not their intention.\n\nTony Minnion  25:33  \nIt was quite remarkable the the powers that the developers are given by the London development corporate. Yeah. Because it was basically I mean, we see we saw with what, what this government has done very recently, and just tearing up planning, you know, just opening the door for the planet. You know, but it was it was those ever called enterprise zones weren't like they did in Liverpool as well. It was very much. Yeah. It's the same old,\n\nBenjamin Selig  26:15  \nYeah, it's very, very bleak. Yeah, but, you know, back to the poster. You know, thanks so much for enlightening me giving me way more information that we had on it, you know, that's really, really useful. Great to understand the Docklands Community Poster Project as well, which we didn't know. \n\nTony Minnion  26:43  \nYou know, I didn't get involved in on that side of the docklands community poster project there is there's an awful lot about that online. And they were they were very active. We had I think we had a poster site in Stratford on this circus on the you know, the one way system the artists who will peek down on the rain Leeson. But it was quite an interesting project. I mean, I'd sort of leave it to them to tell you about it or for you to find out online. It I mean, looking back on it. There was a lot of fuss about the amount of funding given to the arts to the docklands community poster project. But it was just, you know, it was a drop in the ocean compared to that sort of money that was switching swirling around. Yeah. What should I do with these posts? I photograph the posters I've got. One of them was designed by Lorraine Leeson, who was one of the artists in the project. And she's and that I, I, I'll send you the files. And they just, I mean, they're just quick photos I've taken off them.\n\nBenjamin Selig  28:15  \nThat would be Yeah, I mean, that'd be really useful just from the kind of curatorial research side to get some kind of photographic research really, alongside, you know, some of the some of the other things that were going on. Could be really useful. Thank you. Yeah. I mean,\n\nTony Minnion  28:34  \nI've got a couple of copies of them, but my only copies. I'll keep those for nostalgic reasons, to give to my grandchildren, you know?\n\nBenjamin Selig 28:49\nYeah, you keep those for yourself. \n\nTony Minnion  28:54  \nYeah, I'll email them through to you then, Ben, and you can do what you like with them. Great. \n\nBenjamin Selig 29:04\nThanks so much.\n\nTony Minnion 29:05\nIn terms of just I'm just conscious that the one which is no airport in Newham, I don't have the rights for that. It's a Docklands community project. They're all Docklands Community Poster Project posters. I was I was their printer and a practical worker. I used to put the posters up for them.\n\nBenjamin Selig 29:31\nWhen you were doing that, were you working on your own or were there other artists working on the poster?\n\nTony Minnion  29:46  \nThe main body of work for the docklands community poster project was these great big billboards. Yeah, that were huge. And they used to buy advertising billboards, and they had they had designs that changed every couple of weeks. They sort of grew like for example, the first one they started was called Big Money's Moving In, and there was a big corrugated fence, and then every week, a panel of the fence came off and behind it, there was just piles of money. But they looked like tower blocks. Okay, so it was very much very black and white photo montage in the sort of Heartland trip John Hartfield tradition. And my job was to stick them all on bits of plywood, take the ladders out climb the ladders and unscrew the parts and change. But the two artists who did it, you know, they, they sort of got quite a name for themselves doing it as a piece of work. And if you if you Google Dunn and Leeson you'll see what they got up to. So my work was printing the smaller scale  in response to local campaigns. And I was sort of 22 at the time, right? You know, doing it part time. So you know, I was the skivvy on the job, doing the work.\n\nBenjamin Selig 31:37\nDoing the hard labour.\n\nTony Minnion 31:39\nYeah, the hard graft. But you know, it was a nice job. I learnt an awful lot.\n\nBenjamin Selig 31:48\nHow long were you involved?\n\nTony Minnion 31:48\nI did it for 3 years, because I lived in Camden, and Camden opened up a screen-printing resource down in Rosebury Avenue, again to provide printing to local people. It was just before Zerox took off. So if you wanted to say, 'stop driving your cars through our little back streeets' you'd come along and spend two days printing a poster about it, and you'd go and put them up. But, a few years later, the technology had been left behind. People just do A3 photocopies. But I then went off. I carried on screenprinting, I did textiles and banners.\nSo I was very involved in Docklands, two years before I got the job with them and then 3 years after.  \n"}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["E.571-2013"],"accessionNumberNum":"571","accessionNumberPrefix":"E","accessionYear":2013,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2026-05-12","recordCreationDate":"2013-11-20","availableToBook":false}}