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Photo of the installation showing a sign saying present hanging above a tunnel filled with boxes and TV screens
Photographer: Reed Ingram Weir

Let Me Tell You

"Excellent - everyone should see it and realise that people are people. Thank you."
Comment in the visitor's book

Let Me Tell You is a piece about the possibility of change.

This empty shop artwork takes visitors on a journey from recovering addicts and alcoholics' past, through a precarious present and into their hopes for the future. Let Me Tell You explores recovery, asking us all to consider what change is possible in our own lives.

Let Me Tell You will be presented in Newcastle in Spring 2012, with content created by groups at NERAF and The Cyrenians.

Project history

In Spring 2010 Unfolding Theatre first worked with recovering heroin addicts at STAR Project in Stockton to create this remarkable installation. Let Me Tell You was presented in an empty shop, visited by over 550 people.

After the success of the project, we remade Let Me Tell You in Gateshead in Winter 2011. This time we worked with alcoholics alongside recovering drug addicts, exploring different stories of addiction and recovery.

Donna Greenfield from the original Stockton group, came on work placement to help us remake Let Me Tell You in Gateshead.

Photograph of outside of shop with We Are Open sign in the window and the trace of a bus going past Photograph of rollcages with piles of clothes sitting on them and a sign that reads PAST Photograph of label on a pile of clothes that reads, Age 26 - what a laugh. Thought I was reinventing myself but I couldn't shake off the past. Photograph of a woman looking at television screens showing a tattooed arm
Photograph of people in a narrow corridor made of boxes and television screens Photograph of a golden sign that reads FUTURE and boxes with fragile tape Photograph of a woman looking in a peep hole in a box with fragile tape on it Photograph of a box with fragile tape on with an image of a beach inside a peephole and a sign that reads, I want to be unchained from my chemist, to be free, to go to the beach and pick for willocks

Let Me Tell You Gateshead

Designer: Imogen Cloet
Filmmaker: Alex Elliott
Director: Annie Rigby
Sound / AV: Andy Playford
Production Team: Simon Henderson, Mick Davies
Work placement: Donna Greenfield
Support Worker: Amy Johnston
Volunteer: Kirsten Murray-Borbjerg

Photograph of shelves with bundles of clothes on them and a sign above that says PAST Photograph of TV screens and boxes on shelves and a sign above that says PRESENT Photograph of boxes with fragile tape stuck on them with a sign above that says FUTURE Photograph of a box with fragile tape stuck on and handwritten text that says I want to become a domestic violence worker
Flyer image for Let Me Tell You showing a woman's hand with 3 star tattoos Photograph of the shop with a sign in the window that says We are open Photograph of the shop door with 3 people walking in Photograph of a bundle of clothes with a tag on that says Me and me next door neighbour, we were both big girls so we started taking amphetamines, we weighed ourselves every Monday without fail at ASDA until I was 7 stone

Let Me Tell You Stockton

Designer: Imogen Cloet
Filmmaker: Alex Elliott
Director: Annie Rigby
Sound / AV: Andy Playford
Production Team: Mick Davies, Kate Eccles

Production shots

Check out some of our production shots, taken by Reed Ingram Weir.

Northern Rock Foundation logo Gateshead Council logo Shop Art logo Arts Council logo stockton council logo

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