Of All The People In All The World: UK

A long shot of the Corn Exchange building, a large room with wooden floors and wooden clad walls. Piles of rice on labelled sheets of paper representing different groups of people are laid out on the floor. Visitors are seen walking around or standing looking at the piles of rice.


The Corn Exchange, Brighton Dome
7 – 11 September 2024

Brighton 2024

It was great to revisit the Brighton Dome having paid a brief visit there in May for the caravan performance showcase. It’s an amazing building having recently undergone a major redevelopment, refurbishing the studio theatre and the beautiful timber clad Corn Exchange, which with the seating retracted provided a spectacular setting for our landscape of rice.

The show explored a range of themes and subjects from the from the very local to the global, from the distant past to the very present. We included statistics about the venue – its important place in the history of the suffragette movement, the Indian soldiers treated there during the Great War and ABBA winning the Eurovision Song Contest.

Amazing, so thought provoking (audience member)

Our pile of 7 million asylum seekers led to an exploration of conflicts, the numbers of people attempting to cross the English Channel in small boats, those applying for asylum in the UK and those waiting for a decision. Some are fortunate enough to have the freedom and means to travel as tourists and with worries about places becoming overwhelmed by visitors, our section on tourism drew a lot of interest. Many were surprised by the huge number of people who visit Mallorca each year and by the growth in air travel over recent years.

The population of Brighton, Jamaica led to an exploration of the slave trade and civil rights protests over the years. Past and very recent election results showed how the number of women in parliament is beginning to reach parity with men but still has a way to go.

Wonderful! From where we stand each grain of rice looks the same …asylum seeker, billionaire, taxi driver …so many stories but all human (audience member)

We also looked at some of the world’s largest employers – the NHS (similar in size to the population of Birmingham), Indian Railways and Amazon. In health we looked at autism, ADHD and epilepsy and the growing number of people living with dementia and the people who care for them.

Over five days we had 1200 visitors who were very engaged with the show and also loved the opportunity to have a look inside the Corn Exchange.

A large pile of rice representing the population of London in the foreground. Three windows of the Corn Exchange in the background
A selection of labelled piles of rice representing different aspects of space travel. Some of the piles are lit by a blue light.
A man with his back to the camera dressed in grey looks down at two piles of rice
A performer dressed in a brown warehouse coat is kneeling down to pur rice onto a sheet of paper
A long shot of the interios of the Corn Exchange. In the foreground is the silhouette of a large window with a curved top as sunlight streams in. In the background piles of rice are visible
3 piles of rice - 2 representing babies named Liam over time and one representing the number of people watching Oasis play at Knebworth in August 1996.

Credits

Installed and performed by: Yasmin Dawes, Amanda Hadingue, Craig Stephens and Jack Trow
Producer: Michelle Smith

Rice kindly supplied by:

Logo of tilda rice company

Tour Dates