My friend Linda Fredericks, who has died aged 76, was an inspiring art teacher and political activist. She was also the founder and president of ArtSway, the first space for contemporary visual arts to be set up in the New Forest, Hampshire.
Linda was the daughter of Albert Cane, an engineer and inventor, and his wife, Kay (nee Stammers). During the second world war the couple had moved out of London to Orpington, Kent, where Linda was born. The family then settled in Feltham, west London, and Linda attended Ealing County grammar school.
She studied fine art at Leeds School of Art (now Leeds Art University), where her main influences were works by Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. Although her ambition was to be an artist, she also trained as a teacher, and qualified in 1961. That was the year she also became involved with the Socialist Labour League, later the Workers Revolutionary party, delivering its newsletter to factory gates.
Linda taught initially at schools in Salford and then in Streatham, south London. She met Jeremy Fredericks, who worked in the newsletter’s print room, and they married in 1967. We met in 1969, through the party, and through sharing our childcare commitments. The core activists’ main job was to get the paper out. Linda was, for some years, at the centre of the action. Feisty, determined, capable and great fun, she led a life of grand ideas, interrupted by the small dramas of surviving on very little money with three small children.
Due to Jeremy’s ill-health, the family left London in the mid-1970s to live in the New Forest, where Linda taught first at Hounsdown school, Totton, before being appointed head of art at the Arnewood school, New Milton. She and Jeremy divorced in 1982.
Linda soon became involved in the area’s arts scene. She was a founding member and artistic director of the Troubadour theatre company, which was set up for young people in the area in 1981. The group quickly evolved into a chaotic family, working together to put on performances both in conventional theatres such as the New Milton arts centre as well as outdoors. A particular summer project was to perform on the local beaches. For many young people, involvement in the Troubadour proved to be a turning point in their lives.
In 1997 Linda opened an arts centre in the village of Sway in Hampshire. Calling it ArtSway, Linda found the building, appointed the architect Tony Fretton to convert the former stables into a modernist gallery and studios and secured Arts Council funding to establish what is now a thriving arts space. She remained its president until the end of her life. A retrospective of her work, Making an Exhibition of Myself, was held at the gallery in June.
In 2008 she married David Pratley. She is survived by him and her children, Sadie, Lucy and Jessie.
