Restless is an arts activism project about community, visibility and voice for survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse.
The project is named for her - the restless sea - she just keeps going no matter what [...] She is my role model and an object lesson in activism. Every single drop is significant, the sea is made up of millions and squillions of them and collectively they are powerful beyond measure. (Viv Gordon)
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Restless combines walking with creative research, spoken word, music, combined arts and participatory actions for survivors and allies online and in the landscape. The sea provides a central metaphor of the power of continuous collective action to make change.
Most recently, in October 2023, Viv Gordon Company's first ever Punk Gig took place at Lost Horizon in Bristol. Viv was fronting a four-part band, performing songs she had written on coastal walks in earlier stages of this project (scroll down for more!). The second punk gig happened in July 2024, at Morley College in London.
In September 2023 a group of 50 CSA survivors and allies gathered near a beach in Devon, in sync with CSA survivors participating remotely, for a Restless Community Day. The aim was to acknowledge and express solidarity with the international survivor community through creative writing and other creative activities, and to bear witness to and remember those who are no longer with us.
Previous project highlights include our international collaboration with Turkish CSA survivor, writer and activist Meliha Yildiz, the production of the short animation video She Walks... and the #MyLineInTheSand social media campaign. |
Restless writing residency, 2022. Photo: Luke Gosling @point.and.aim
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Our vision for Restless is for it to become a big, bold live music and outdoor spectacle, co-created with child sex abuse survivors. We want to use punky, anarchic art to shout it from the clifftops, that thing that most people can't talk about, and our recent punk gig was the first step towards making this happen!
How Restless became Punk
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In May 2021, Viv walked just over 100 miles from Starcross to Plymouth on the South Devon Coast Path. Along the way she wrote poems and songs that became the inspiration for a Restless song cycle.
We explored various music styles during this time and decided on punk as an authentic format to represent Viv’s voice going forward. In collaboration with two fantastic co-composers, Quinta and Thomas Johnson, and later with drummer Sean Randle and bassist Andy Hamill, we developed the project and performed the resulting songs for the first time at a work-in-progress sharing at Lost Horizon in Bristol, which turned out to be an epic, triumphant, amazing night with fantastic spoken word support from Clare Shaw and Anita Karla Kelly. And in July 2024 we shared more work-in-progress punk songs in at Morley College in London! |
Photo: Paul Blakemore
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Viv's personal reflections after the Bristol gig:
"The gig was a proper life high – so, so much fun - the sheer victory and reclamation of it.
Shouting out the stuff that has been silenced and suppressed.
I was so, so frightened. All the desperation, grief, madness and rage of a life shaped by child sexual abuse condensed into these songs. All the hope, reaching and steeliness of a life shaped by activism - that has watched others put their hearts, minds and bodies into the fray because they KNOW things can't stay the same - sometimes there is no choice but to act - I honestly don't know what else to do ...
In the days after the gig I wept for the very sad, very scared, very desperate, very lonely little me self - I wish she knew how this turns out .... I'm so grateful to be here and to be supported by an incredible team of artists and collaborators who have stood beside me to birth this project. None of it would be possible without each kind, patient, brilliant, curious soul trying to work out how to tell these stories, how to make these sounds, how to hold these spaces, how to make this accessible, how to try and fail and be confused and keep trying, how to find the money and look after everybody who is courageous enough to want to be part of it, to keep coming back and keep engaging.
We are building an army - together we are a tide of unstoppable change."
"The gig was a proper life high – so, so much fun - the sheer victory and reclamation of it.
Shouting out the stuff that has been silenced and suppressed.
I was so, so frightened. All the desperation, grief, madness and rage of a life shaped by child sexual abuse condensed into these songs. All the hope, reaching and steeliness of a life shaped by activism - that has watched others put their hearts, minds and bodies into the fray because they KNOW things can't stay the same - sometimes there is no choice but to act - I honestly don't know what else to do ...
In the days after the gig I wept for the very sad, very scared, very desperate, very lonely little me self - I wish she knew how this turns out .... I'm so grateful to be here and to be supported by an incredible team of artists and collaborators who have stood beside me to birth this project. None of it would be possible without each kind, patient, brilliant, curious soul trying to work out how to tell these stories, how to make these sounds, how to hold these spaces, how to make this accessible, how to try and fail and be confused and keep trying, how to find the money and look after everybody who is courageous enough to want to be part of it, to keep coming back and keep engaging.
We are building an army - together we are a tide of unstoppable change."
Photos by Paul Blakemore
“The Restless process has been so enjoyable. This current phase began with Viv creating tunes and lyrics and singing them into her phone; Quinta and I then together worked them up into fully realised songs, along the way exploring various musical influences and styles, within the overarching brief that it had to be punky. Quinta and I have distinctly different compositional styles but it’s been joyful to find how easily we’ve worked together. The key has been that we’ve both always immediately said yes to each other’s input, and built from ‘yes and’ rather than ’no but’. Collaboration between composers isn’t always easy but this has been a total pleasure. The most recent phase in the process saw the arrival of drummer Sean and bassist Andy, who brought their own huge experience into the room and gave the songs new nuance and energy.”
- Thomas Johnson
- Thomas Johnson
The band
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Quinta is a London-based experimental composer and multi-instrumentalist, solo artist and member of Collectress.
She has performed across the world with various artists, including Radiohead’s Philp Selway, Bat for Lashes, Patrick Wolf, and Lamb, playing violin, viola, musical saw, keyboards, and more. With a background in third sector activism, Quinta is co-founder of Music in Detention and spent formative years working with Music in Prisons and participatory film-makers, Living Lens. She was Music Fellow at Rambert 2015/16 and British Council Musician-in-Residence 2016/17. On the back of her solo live art show The Shape Of The Moving Air (Athens 2020) and a year of international residencies supported by the PRSF Composer Fund, Quinta released an album of Aeolian harp music with Nonclassical in November 2022. She collaborated with award-winning BBC Essential Mix DJ HAAi on her recent album release, and is currently working with choreographer Trish Okenwa on dance piece Fertile Ground, and with songwriter Victoria Hume on Radical Abundance, a project exploring the notion of ‘degrowth’ and the dying days of capitalism. www.quintamakes.com 
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THOMAS JOHNSON is a composer, musician and musical director working in theatre, the concert hall and production music, and is currently training to be a music therapist.
His music has been performed to audiences worldwide, from Singapore to St. Petersburg, on the West End and Broadway, in village halls and castles, theatres and parks. He has worked with theatre companies in Costa Rica, the US, Russia and China, in addition to the many UK productions he has composed for. Concert compositions include an oratorio, Street of Bugles (performed at Birmingham Symphony Hall and Gloucester Cathedral), and a Three Choirs Festival commission, Four Songs for the End of Wars, composed for the Gloucester Cathedral bells and a children’s choir. He has also written scores for several BBC Radio 4 drama productions. In his teens in the 70’s he made a racket in various punk bands, including The Infested, and Wasteland, whose EP’s can still be rooted out online. Restless is Thomas’ 5th collaboration with Viv Gordon, having previously written and performed the music for I Am Joan, Prescribed, The Book of Jo, and Cutting Out. (Photo by Joe Bailey) www.thomasjohnsoncomposer.com 
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Sean Randle is a professional drummer, bass player and guitarist in the Stroud area, interested in projects, session work, functions, tours etc. He's as happy playing pretty heavy alt rock as he is jazz, soul, folk, world music...
Sean has much experience touring and recording and plays with feel and groove. He is known mostly as a drummer but has played 200 odd gigs on bass guitar as well with a wedding band and also rans his own soul band on bass. www.bandmix.co.uk/sean-randle
Sean has much experience touring and recording and plays with feel and groove. He is known mostly as a drummer but has played 200 odd gigs on bass guitar as well with a wedding band and also rans his own soul band on bass. www.bandmix.co.uk/sean-randle
The Restless punk team:
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Viv Gordon - Lead Artist / Singer
Tom Johnson - Composer Quinta - Composer Sean Randle - Drums Maddy Kiley - Bass |
Kate McStraw - Producer
Lise Huber - Voice Coach Lisa Hall - PA to Viv Gordon Helga Brandt - Marketing & Communications |
Camilo Salazar - Recording Sound Engineer
Paul Blakemore – Photographer at gig |
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Restless is supported by public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England
with additional support from 101 Outdoor Arts, British Council Unlimited Micro Award, Exeter Northcott Theatre, Strike a Light, Devon Community Foundation and Morley Radio (Morley College London).
with additional support from 101 Outdoor Arts, British Council Unlimited Micro Award, Exeter Northcott Theatre, Strike a Light, Devon Community Foundation and Morley Radio (Morley College London).