Welfare State International 1976-1983

During my time as photographer-in-residence to the Borough of Pendle, Lancashire, one of my jobs was to record the work of the performance collective Welfare State (1968-2006), then based in Burnley.

"Welfare State is a nomadic consortium of artists, makers, musicians and performers. As Civic Magicians and Engineers of the Imagination they invent ceremonies, devise rituals and construct images for particuclar times, places and seasons. Travelling throughout Europe with a mobile village of lorries and caravans, Welfare State create and animate massive outdoor events with elemental sculptures, focussed theatre pieces, celebrations, dances, processions and surreal slideshows." John Fox (1938-2025), co-founder, in sleeve notes to the album Welfare State/Lol Coxhill, C1514, Virgin Records, 1975.

At Foxy's Rave, the May 2026 memorial event for Fox, Dutch performance artist Warner Van Wely, who worked with Welfare State in the early 1970s and later formed his own theatre collective Dogtroep, told us what he learned from John:

Art is not an extra. It belongs to everyday life — outside the walls of theatres and museums.
Start with the location and its people, not with a written-out script, let the landscape or building dictate the performance.
Make images central (figures, dragons, moving sculptures), let raw materials (wood, iron, fire, water) carry the collective experience.
Avoid slick perfection. Keep technique visible, so the audience gets the feeling: ‘I could do that too’.
Involve the whole company in making music, not as background, but as the shared breath of the work.
Work as a collective organism, without fixed roles, director, performer, builder, musician merging. Starting with the making in the workshop, ending together with the audience, somewhere in the mud.
Move as a nomadic tribe — not an institution, but a mobile village that lands, unleashes carnival and madness, then disappears.
And a last one: since modern society lacks meaning, art should invent new urban rituals to create moments that feel truly different.

In the following video, made in 2013, John Fox and his partner Sue Gill (also a Welfare State co-founder) reflect on their practice.

See video r/t 2 min., 35 sec.