Last week Laura and Heather went to see performance artist Bryony Kimmings‘ latest show Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model (CLSRM), a collaboration with her amazing 9 year-old niece Taylor Houchen, in which she explores the growing tween industry and how ‘children are manipulated into becoming prematurely sexualised consumers’. We went with a few anxieties: we’d enjoyed talking with Bryony as our and her projects developed, including as part of a panel she organised on ‘The Age of Celebrity‘, but worried that our research had made us hypercritical of any and all representations of young people’s relationships to popular culture and celebrity. Our anxieties were misplaced, as Bryony’s found a way to capture the complexity of tweenage girlhood including showing how media savvy young people are and what adult desires are mixed up in our construction of children as innocent and in need of our protection. The show is moving, entertaining and thought-provoking and the best thing we can recommend is that you find a way to go and see it yourself. But in this post we’ll talk about a few of our impressions of the show (warning- including some spoilers).

This post is a shout out to  Bryony Kimmings‘ new artistic experiment. Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model (CLSRM for short) is a collaboration between Bryony and her 9 year old niece Taylor. Bryony got in touch with us a few weeks ago when we launched this website. She introduced herself:

I am a performance artist. I am based between Cambridge at a venue called the Junction and Soho Theatre and Southbank Centre in London. A contact in the education department of a big theatre sent me a link to your wonderful website and the research project you are currently amidst. Its raising some attention! They thought it would be useful reading for my current project.

The  social statement for Bryony’s new project describes how it:

seeks to promote a non-conventional character as a role model for young people using the current strategies and methods available. The aim is to explore whether this character can have the same amount of influence on young people as the current conventional offer. If this succeeds then we can conclude that there is potential for an alternative offer for young people. If this fails we can make a more informed social comment on the current offer and the powers generating it.