My friend Brian Lewis, who has died aged 88, was the founder in 1980 of Yorkshire Art Circus, a community publisher and arts organisation based in a converted school in Glasshoughton in West Yorkshire.
Until 1997 Brian was also its full-time coordinator, leading a team of writers and community “enablers” who encouraged ordinary Yorkshire folk to value their own experiences and to commit them to print. Many of its scores of books were collections of memories and photographs from various contributors, but others were by lone authors, such as The Bus to Barnsley Market by Ian Clayton (1989), On Earth to Make the Numbers Up by Evelyn Haythorne (1990) and Chapati and Chips by Almas Khan (1993).
Under the motto “Everyone has a story to tell. We find ways of helping them tell it”, the Art Circus often took a bold, experimental approach to assembling its publications. In 1988, for example, Brian and a team of writers based themselves in Scarborough library, where they asked borrowers for their memories of seaside holidays. They started collecting material in the morning, edited the interviews, and had The Bumper Book of Beanos ready for publication by the time the library closed. Apart from making books, the Art Circus also arranged art and photography exhibitions.
Brian himself was an accomplished artist, with his mainly figurative painting often focusing on trade union events and history. His work was regularly exhibited at solo and group exhibitions across West and South Yorkshire and found its way into private collections in Canada, the US, Germany and India.
In addition he wrote poetry that was published in three books, The Waters of Birmingham (1997), The Flight to Derry (2002) and The Ghost Walk (2006), as well as two novels, The Sexy Bits of Lady C (2015) and A Hesitant Woman (2016). He was Birmingham’s first poet laureate from 1996 to 1997, helping to raise the profile of poetry across the city, running workshops and mentoring other would-be and existing poets.
Born in Smethwick in the West Midlands to Ernest, a poster writer, and Ada (nee Lines), a shopworker, Brian left James Watt technical school to become an apprentice in a foundry, before doing national service at RAF Topcliffe near Thirsk in North Yorkshire.
After moving to Pontefract with his first wife, Jean Barker, in the early 1960s, he did teacher training at Dudley Training College for Teachers and then worked as an English teacher at Royds school in Leeds. He later moved into teacher training at Scawsby College near Doncaster, High Melton College in Doncaster, Bretton Hall in Leeds and Sheffield University’s extramural department, before setting up Yorkshire Art Circus.
After the Art Circus, he set up the Pontefract Press publishing company and was self-employed, editing and producing books – often on the interplay between art and economic development – for local authorities, housing associations and government agencies.
He and Jean divorced in 1982 and he married the textile artist Reini Schühle the following year.
She survives him, as do his six children, John, Vicki and Rachel with Jean, and Jake, Jess and Hannah with Reini, six grandchildren and a great-granddaughter, Rowan, who was born in the early hours of the day Brian died.
