War Path, 2006–07

education project, Tate Britain, London

In 2006 I was invited to run a project with a group of young people (aged 15–21), for Visual Dialogues, based in the education department at Tate Britain. We were tasked with responding to an artwork by Mark Wallinger, titled State Britain (2007), about anti-Iraq-War protester Brian Haw. This led to a year of research into the condition of British democracy, which included field trips to the Houses of Parliament, the grave of William Blake, and 56a Infoshop (an anarchist social centre) among other sites, interviewing people along the way. The final outcome was War Path, a game developed collaboratively, which visitors to Tate Britain could play in the museum. A machine placed next to a painting by Paul Nash dispensed the game in exchange for a penny. The player received a kit that included a booklet, stickers and a map of Tate Britain – leading them around various war-themed artworks in the collection and posing a moral question at each stop. The target was to determine whether the player was a dove or a hawk.