Protect and Survive 2.0 (2016) was a collaborative project with artist Emma Finn, consisting of a pamphlet, a video and eight volunteers who disseminated instructional material through performance. Our Protect and Survive 2.0 volunteers demonstrated ‘safe responses’ to different ‘alarms’, using their cloth braids to create a refuge on a dance floor. Protect and Survive was first a public information series on civil defence produced by the British government during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Intended to inform British citizens on how to protect themselves during a nuclear attack, it consisted of pamphlets and broadcasts. The series was originally intended for distribution only in the event of a dire national emergency but provoked such intense public interest that the pamphlets were authorised for general release. Organizations such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament protested that the pamphlet popularised the idea that a nuclear war could be survived, making such a war more likely. The women's movement in the 70s had a strong influence in this regard, much of it emanating from the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. In 1982 the camp organised 70,000 women to form a 14-mile human chain around a nuclear base.
Thank you to our performers, ‘the ladies who refuged’: Naomi Baldwin Webb, Sarah Bell Jones, Gemma Crook, Andy Grace Hayes, Claire Pearce, Hazel Powell and Stella Sabin. The project’s sound was made with Francis Dosoo.