Volunteer Martin Jones is Runner-Up in Mayoral Award for the Arts

On Friday 9th May, Martin Jones received the Runner-Up prize for The Cedric Hardwicke Award for Arts from the Mayor of Dudley, Councillor Hilary Bills, in the Mayor's Parlour at Dudley Council House, as part of this year’s Civic Awards.

Martin has volunteered at Dudley Archives for the past three years - scanning, photographing and cataloguing the contents of many portfolios and boxes of items compiled by Dudley’s Borough Artist, Steve Field, as part of the DBA (Dudley Borough Artist) database. The archive spans the Public Art career of Steve Field and contains detailed background information on Steve's projects - both those he designed himself, and those he has commissioned. Martin's work on the DBA archive has provided photographs, descriptions and reference codes for over 1,200 individual items.

 

Starting work in 1988 for Dudley Council, Steve's public art works have covered all parts of the Borough with topics ranging from historical figures like Abraham Darby's Memorial on Birmingham Road, Woodsetton, to Pegasus, the legendary winged horse from Greek mythology on Scotts Green Island, that lends its name to the adjacent school Academy. 

 

The archive helps to explain the detail of art commissions that can take several years to come to fruition, involving gaining planning permission, liaising with the local authority, fundraising, fabrication of the artwork and finally, arrangements for the installation. It also reveals how, for some of the most prestigious commissions such as Dudley's Millennium Sculpture Trail, competitions were arranged for prominent artists from around the UK to win the commission.

 

Martin has also deposited his own collection of 1,500 images, stored at Dudley Archives, the Zulu Dawn Street Art archive (reference: DZD). Martin's photographs have gained attention from renowned organisations: images have been selected for use in documentaries by Sky and ITV, and in major Street Art exhibitions including recently those at the Saatchi Gallery and Worcester Museum.

 

The DZD collection contains numerous images documenting the emergence of the UK Hip Hop scene and street art as a form of expression in the 1980s. These photographs were taken by Martin during his time managing numerous Hip Hop groups and artists, such as the ‘Wolverhampton B Boys’, which included the dancer and artist Goldie (Clifford Joseph Price), whose early murals were the foundation of his later international artistic work. 

 

The acts with which Martin worked had a predominantly Midland basis and quickly emerged as some of the leading lights of the nationwide movement, competing and exhibiting at events in Birmingham, Coventry and London. Martin invited those within the New York street art scene such as the TATS CRU, Vulcan and T-KID to the UK. 

 

The development of UK Hip Hop's international connections is also well demonstrated by the success of the three Bridlington International Street Art Competitions which Martin organised 1987-1989.

 

The Dudley Borough Artist (DBA) collection and Zulu Dawn Street Art (DZD) collection are available for the public to view in the Archives’ Search Room. Please contact Dudley Archives and Local History Service for more information.