Sing Me a Song with Social Significance
Pencil on paper
The Pioneer Singers is choir of Goldsmiths art students, formed by Ruth
Beale especially to learn and perform ‘Sing Me a Song with Social
Significance’. She discovered the song in the ‘Pioneer Songbook’, a 1944 publication held in the Goldsmiths Library, and published to celebrate the centenary of the Rochdale Pioneers (the world's first successful consumer cooperative). The song was taken from the musical revue
‘Pins and Needles’ (the first-and-only trade union Broadway hit). During the course of the degree show, covers of the song will also be performed
by The Strawberry Thieves socialist choir and four other contemporary bands and musicians.
Ruth Beale employs different forms of action-research to investigate
cultural, epistemological and pedagogical concerns. Performance,
discussion, drawing, collecting, and re-presentation of archive material
question the nature of research and interpretation of ideas and
ideologies.
Recent projects include The Voyage of Nonsuch, a major new film
commission with Karen Mirza for Whitstable Biennale 2010, developed
through a special-access research residency in the BFI National Archive;
WHAT I BELIEVE (A Polemical Collection) at Space, London; and a library
and launch of The New Sixpenny Pamphlets at The Mulberry Tree, SE8
Gallery, London. Since February 2008 she has been hosting ‘Miss B's Salons’, themed discussion events at private and public venues including the ICA, Camden Arts Centre and Whitechapel Gallery.
