The Shape of a Pocket
Founders
Photo by Roelof Bakker
Jan Woolf
Jan Woolf met John Berger on a bus in 1972.
See her obituary for John.
Choosing the form to fit an idea, she is an artist and writer. Her 4th play Blood Gold and Oil ran Upstairs at the Gatehouse and Riverside Studios Hammersmith in 2023. The previous three, Sphinx, Porn Crackers and You Don’t Know What you Don’t Know, were produced at the Hackney Empire and Royal Court respectively. Her short story collections Fugues on a Funny Bone and Stormlight were published in 2010 and 2019 and her art thriller From the Shadow will be published in 2024.
A varied working life as teacher, events producer, political activist, film classifier, editor and publisher has informed her work. Like Dorothy Parker, Jan 'hates writing, but loves having written.’ She is regularly published with The Morning Star and International Times as an essayist and reviewer. She has painted on and off throughout her life and has an exhibition Landscape and the Inner World at the Tavistock Gallery London in December 2024.
Berger’s work has always inspired her and her political activism has included the Free For All free museums campaign, No Glory in War and she was a founder of the new Left Book Club.
Tina Grace
Born in London in the 1960’s to Irish / English bookseller parents, founders of Hammersmith Books her family home was full of books including John Berger’s full catalogue of work. In 1972 Episode 1 of BBC TV series Ways of Seeing was filmed at her primary school. During her early teens she trained at São Paulo Circus School, later performing in the streets and plazas of Brazil and Europe. Settling in Barcelona until the early 90’s, she formed part of the prestigious Catalan performance group La Claca She embarked on her musical career in London in the late mid 1990s.
Her Mercury Music Award nominated song Letting Go produced by Nitin Sawhney led to two decades of collaboration with the composer-producer – as co-writer/lead vocalist on Eight of his subsequent albums. A chance meeting with John Berger in 2009, led to on-going exchanges and a friendship with his son Yves and nephew Simon Berger.
As musical duo LaQualia she worked with Tom Colvin creating compositions featuring John Bergers voice and words, including '5am'; V/O Toby Jones, BlueBlack and The Stirring". Tina also produced a multi-media tribute to John Berger after his death on 2/11/17 Ways of hearing John Berger. This included readings from the Berger family which featured Smokestack editions collected poems. Exploring Berger’s archive with the intention of attracting younger diverse less academic audiences to his work, she focused on the themes of migration, exile, the importance of community and of living in harmony with nature.
Surrender; Ways of Hearing John Berger, a 3D audio-visual immersive journey into Berger’s archive was commissioned for The British Library 4/7/23 and co-produced with Geoff Bird featuring collaborations with Laura Barton, Keisha Thompson, Anna Phoebe, Tom Slater, Michael Berger and Hassan Hajjaj.
© Ep 1 BBC Ways of Seeing
Patrons and Matrons
Sally Potter
Mike Dibb
Lorraine Ashbourne
Andy Serkis
Keisha Thompson
Peter Kennard
Jillian Edelstein
Gareth Evans
Richard Bradbury
Nothing in the nature around us is evil. This needs to be repeated since one of the human ways of talking oneself into inhuman acts is to cite the supposed cruelty of nature.