Ralph Oswick: A mighty tome

When I arrived in Bath in 1969 to spend a few creative weeks with the embryonic Bath Arts Workshop and more especially its cheeky spin-off, the Natural Theatre Company, little did I realise that our modest attempt at agit-prop theatre with its cardboard props and costumes selected from the charity jumble box would eventually transform into an international phenomenon, performing in around 80 countries and transcending language and social barriers around the world.

That our cronky old but much loved pink and green Commer van would become a veritable fleet of flash Mercedes crew buses.

That we would become a British

Council flagship company, exporting that essential product, laughter.

At the time it was inconceivable that one of our shows, written as a one-off for a Berlin classical music festival would eventually be performed over 1,400 times to an estimated total audience of about a million people.

And how would I know, as I squeezed into a rather tight frock purloined from the aforementioned charity box that my character for that night would become a cultural ambassador, meeting, amongst others, Margaret Thatcher and the presidents of Austria, Costa Rica and Ecuador, and would eventually lead the Queen’s Jubilee parade along The Mall, backed by none other than the band of the

Grenadier Guards?

Meanwhile, myriad other projects came, went or flourished under the all-encompassing Bath Arts Workshop wing. Adventure playgrounds (shockingly new at the time), a truant school, print and film workshops, several other successful forays into experimental theatre, the restoration of at-risk Georgian properties, and cuttingedge research into alternative technology.

A pile of old bikes awaiting restoration became the biggest bike ride in the world, raising millions for the British Heart Foundation.

A young lad from Snowhill observing the workshop’s spoof rock band, thought ‘Maybe, just maybe, I could be a real rock star’ and went on to become half of one of the world’s most successful pop duos.

Other Workshop stalwarts can, 50y years later, be found infiltrating the annals of hugely successful artistic endeavours across the UK.

Whilst countless others still, merely had their minds opened to more modest possibilities. One thing is certain, many lives were never the same again.

Now all that ‘And much, much more!’ as our eager felt-pen posters were wont to proclaim at the time, has been crammed into a book.

With archive photos galore (is that really YOU in those dreadful flares?), previously unseen drawings and hilarious reminiscences, it’s quite a tome.

A historical record so comprehensive that Lady Margaret (yes it was her marching to the palace) has declared it to be a coffee table book so hefty that with a leg screwed onto each corner it could actually be used as a coffee table!

There’s an online launch on September 12th after which bookshops across the nation will be flooded with copies. Full details of the book and its launch (and indeed how to pre-order it from the publishers Tangent Books) can be found at www.bathartsworkshop.org.