Watching Everybody in the Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992

— 2 minute read

A clip from Everybody in the Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992 with teenagers waving their hands about in lasers

I've rewatched Everybody in the Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992 a couple of times now. It's a lecture by artist Jeremy Deller told to a class of A-level students which uses acid house as a thread to show the social and political shift of the time, including the miners strikes and Castlemorton.

What I like about it is that it doesn't dissolve into a Teens React To Gurning Ravers video or a load of talking heads talking about how great it was Back In The Day TM. Deller talks very thoughtfully through the context of everything and lets the video clips do the chunk of the work. I really hope he does a couple more of these as he has a great way of presenting a subject that could have been shown as a jokey period in recent history.

Couple of notes:

  • A colleague of mine was shocked when most of the kids in the class said they'd never been to the countryside
  • My (Dutch) wife pointed out that she didn't realise the level of mistrust people had in the government at that point as there's nothing similar in mainland Europe at that point, and no wonder it planted the seeds for something like Brexit in mining communities.

Updated

It's off the BBC iPlayer but now up on the Gucci Youtube channel.