Have it your way

— Raven Row's People Make Television

A shorter version published on The Architectural Exhibition Review

Installation view of Open Door in People Make Television. Photo: Crystal Li. Courtesy to Raven Row, London

Sitting on a dark grey sofa watching television programmes from the 70s and 80s goes probably the best with this 18th-century domestic architecture in Spitalfields, London. Raven Row returns with People Make Television, an archival exhibition of the history of community-access television programming in the United Kingdom after 5 years of hiatus. Programmes under Community Programme Unit (CPU), an outlying department of BBC, as well as short-lived community cable channels owned by commercial cable stations, are to be browsed on the ground floor and the first floor respectively. Despite their difference in origin, they were united in their efforts of giving the unheard ‘voices, attitudes, and opinions’ access to the airwaves as a response to the volatile political and social climates in early 1970s Britain. Taking forward, we are actually looking back into British history through television’s.

Access is the cornerstone of the open-access television programming, as manifested in the name of CPU first series — Open Door, which aired on BBC2 from 1972 to 1983 in a weekly late slot. On an open call basis, the selected applications were given technical and financial support to make their programmes with untouched editorial autonomy. From ex-prisoners to female film co- ops, the groups and individuals making their presence on the 100 episodes featured in this exhibition were mostly bodies of opinion that felt marginalised and neglected in society. Their forms were disparate, ranging from investigation and documentary, to open debate and interview, etc. ‘Your own say in your own way’, the access to airtime was access to discursive power from within, considering BBC’s ‘establishment’ status as a state broadcaster.

In contrast, community cable stations hosted on the first floor signify access to discursive power from beneath. Stemming as a business decision, commercial cable companies were issued licenses to cablecast content appealing to local communities in areas with poor reception of broadcast television. Five community cable stations came to life between 1972 and 1974: Greenwich Cablevision, Bristol Channel, Shielfield Cablevision, Swindon Viewpoint, and Wellingborough Cablevision. Relying heavily on the help of volunteers, the content anchored to the localities more than ever. Unlike CPU, where initially marginalised voices were given the platform, the neighbours and community activists were forming their voices in the process. With portapak, they have filmed content full of local flavours, from quiz show on the borough history and spending to worker strikes in their own regions. It was indeed more bottom-up than CPU in developing a truly participatory television.

Access and power are inextricable. Public-access television not only empowered the ‘misrepresented, underrepresented, and unrepresented’ from the making end, the access to these programmes also gave power to the receiving end through inclusion and selection, as articulated through the curation.

Exhibition views in People Make Television. Photo: Crystal Li. Courtesy to Raven Row, London

On the ground floor, 12 old box televisions are chronologically arranged across the two compartments, playing on loop Open Door programmes over the decade. The audio device, which can automatically connect to the episode currently playing in from of you, allows simultaneous watching among visitors. The visitors’ accessibility to the programmes is never restricted by the two chairs in front of each television, metaphorically speaking to how the emergence of open-access television was interlocked with the idea of bringing television to households that could not receive clear signals at that time. Meanwhile, in each living room-like gallery, visitors can choose which episode to play on the old TV with a remote control rather than being fed. Such a twofold viewing experience culminates in a sense of power and autonomy. Not an individual was excluded in this epochal revolution of Television programming when ‘watching’ is an active part of making one’s voice heard. This ingenious curatorial design returns visitors to a 70s experience of community-access television from a bilateral perspective. This exhibition is beyond the history of television-making, it also touches on the revolutionary upheaval in television-viewing. Camera and remote, without either one, television could never stand.