Something Wonderful Will Happen
Ruth Proctor

For Instructions for an Ordinary Utopia Ruth Proctor created a new motto for Frome, Something Wonderful Will Happen, a message of hope and aspiration offered to the town to adopt as it saw fit.

Ruth worked with students of Frome Community College to develop her commission for Instructions for an Ordinary Utopia. The ideas both for creating the new motto for the town and of how to spread that motto through the community were developed through discussion sessions with an intimate group of 13-18 year old students over an extended period of 4 months.

Over the duration of Instructions for an Ordinary Utopia Proctor’s motto manifested itself in the town like a political campaign – on postcards, t-shirts, banners, badges and stickers, as well as in much more spectacular fashion. The opening and closing weekends of Instructions for an Ordinary Utopia saw the artist’s most spectacular incarnation of the campaign when the motto was flown in the skies above Frome, trailing in red capital letters behind a light aircraft.

Proctor offered the motto to the town to be adopted freely and the phrase has cropped up in everything from tweets to graffiti murals to tattoos during the project. The phrase was even adopted by the Frome Ladies Football Club in place of a sponsor’s logo on their 2014/15 season strip.