Basildon in Essex, England is an average town, small, working class, and less diverse rather than more. CJ Clarke was born in raised in Basildon, and quickly found his way out for college for documentary making in London. After his work from the Iraq War was politicised, he travelled to different countries. Finally, after meeting friends from around the world, and seeing different places, he was convinced that his little un-important town actually had some interesting stories to tell. That lead to a ten-year journey in studying, researching, and documenting Basildon. The book of which the exhibition is based on is Magic Party Place. With gritty black and white images that tell a tale of disenfranchised youth, and bored elders, he complicates Basildon’s narrative past common divisive stereotypes of a crass working class “Essex Girl” and “Basildon Man”. Through providing images, posters, defamatory headlines, and even statistics, and academic articles in his book, he manages to mix his artistic endeavour with a level of journalistic integrity that gives us all a new take on working class Basildon.