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Garrie Fletcher

~ writing and all that

Garrie Fletcher

Category Archives: Culture

Kit de Working Class

08 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by fletcherski in Birmingham, Birmingham Writers, creativity, Culture, Scholarship, Short Stories, Working Class, Writers, writing

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Kit de Waal, marginalised, Scholarship, Sleaford Mods, Stories, Working Class, Working class stories, writing

Birmingham writer, Kit de Waal, has set up a scholarship for marginalised people. She wants to give someone, who wouldn’t otherwise have it, the opportunity to write and to develop as a writer.

Kit says, ‘I really see a gap in white, working-class stories – it’s a massively neglected area. I don’t think the experience of the white working class is valued enough.’ I couldn’t agree more.

Kit

She also talks about some of the reasons for the lack of working class literature, ‘I think there are gatekeeping processes at work in publishing. First, you need an agent, and you need the time to write. That’s one way you’re going to be filtered out of the system. Maybe there is a lack of confidence in our working-class stories, in whether people want to hear them? But sometimes we have to tell them, otherwise other people do so on your behalf, and that’s no good. We have a responsibility to tell our stories, and the industry has a responsibility to hear them.’

Working class stories are really important to me. My father was a builder, a labourer and tells some incredible stories of friendship, betrayal, law breaking, violence and toe curling humour. These stories are not represented in publishing. These are the stories I write and the stories I want to read.

I think this is the reason I enjoy Sleaford Mods. They tell modern day working class stories with none of the romanticised crap that you see in shows like Call The Midwife and the like.

Please read the whole of the article on Kit and her scholarship here and if you are a working class writer apply.

 

How about a list of great working class books or stories?

 

 

 

The Brum Radio Lives!

31 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by fletcherski in Arts, Birmingham, Culture, Live Music, Music, News, Radio, Reading, Writers, writing

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Birmingham, Book Club, Brum Radio, Johnathan Coe, Local Bands, Local Writers, Mazzy Snape, Mixcloud, Music, Ocean Colour Scene, Steve Craddock, uk

At last, Birmingham has its very own alternative radio station, Brum Radio. The station covers local bands, including an interview with Ocean Colour Scene’s Steve Craddock, and events as well as a Book Club programme that looks at the work of local authors. Their first guest was Johnathan Coe talking about his new book, Number Eleven. The show has teamed up with Waterstones to give you a £6 discount on the book when you say…….Well, to find out what the code is read the full article here on Mazzy Snape’s blog.

  

If you missed the first show you can grab it at MixCloud.
 

There’s stuff to do…

11 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by fletcherski in Art, creativity, Culture, Inspirational, Music

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David Bowie, great music, Living in fear, Music

There’s stuff to do. There’s always stuff to do. I’m supposed to be finalising my application for the Word factory apprenticeship scheme and to be fair I’ve done a bit, but my mind is elsewhere. Early this morning I’d just got out of the shower and was about to do some press ups when my wife came in and told me that David Bowie had died. I looked at her as if she was mad. ‘I’ve just heard it on the radio,’ she said, ‘they just announced it on 6 Music.’ I grabbed my phone and sat on the bed. Sure enough, the BBC News confirmed it, David Bowie had died at the age of 69 from cancer. All my enthusiasm for the day ahead sagged away. I went through the motions of my morning exercises with one word bouncing around, ‘fuck.’

These last few weeks have seen some musical greats depart. First there was Lemmy, the infamous front man and bass player from Motorhead a man known for his partying and ‘fuck you attitude.’ Many were surprised that he was still alive. Then there was the death of John Bradbury, the drummer and backbone of The Specials, a band that created the soundtrack to my teens and now…now this.

I got into Bowie late. Lots of people loved him, but they weren’t my people. They were old or dyed their hair and wore ridiculous jackets with padded shoulders. ‘Let’s Dance’ may have catapulted him into world-wide stardom but it wasn’t for me. ‘Ashes to Ashes’ had a bleak melancholy that was loved by Goths and New Romantics alike, but once again they weren’t my people. When I was at Art College a friend of mine went to see Tin Machine (Bowie’s short-lived rock project) and I couldn’t understand why – why would you go and see the guy who sang ‘China Girl?’ Then in the mid 90’s I listened to Hunky Dory and nothing was ever the same again.

I wouldn’t say I was an obsessive Bowie fan; I haven’t listened to all of his work, yet, but I know what I like. What got me from the off was his lyrical playfulness, the way the words were just as important as the music. He could weave history, heartache and literature all within a song that you couldn’t get out of your head and he never stood still. Many musicians will find their niche and stick with it ploughing the same furrow over and over. Bowie was always moving, always growing and never afraid to take risks. In 2009, Vanity Fair published their Proust Questionaire that included answers from David Bowie. It’s well worth reading through the whole thing -which is here– but the question that stayed with me was this:

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Living in fear.

David Bowie showed us what it was like not to live in fear, to be daring, to take risks and to have fun and he did it all with an innate sense of style.

I haven’t received my copy of his latest album, Blackstar, yet, but I know it’ll be good. It’ll be something I take time to listen to and digest, something that I cherish, something beautiful made by a man who changed music and art for so many and who wrote some of the best songs ever.

There was a post today from Gaz Coombes, musician and former front man of Supergrass, that I found incredibly helpful. A friend had texted it to him, when he heard of Bowie’s death and he posted it on:

If you’re sad, just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.

Yeah, that.

Something to lighten the mood…

Art Cull.

20 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by fletcherski in Culture, Education, The Arts

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Culture, cuts, education, The Arts, The Guardian, uk

I read this in the Guardian last Tuesday and it was quite frankly shocking. Not because of the subject matter, anyone who works in the Arts knows this is going on, but shocking because more people aren’t concerned about this.

There are fewer students in schools and colleges taking arts qualifications and fewer art based teachers in schools. Educational establishments live in fear of government inspections and rankings and these inspections look solely at maths, english and sciences. Consequently these are the subjects that are pushed in schools, these are the subjects that are better funded and the subjects that school managers have sleepless nights over.

But, as this reports shows, the Arts in this country bring in £76.9bn. which is no small amount of beans. The Arts enrich peoples lives and promote health and wellbeing and their true impact upon the country will be far higher than the figure quoted above.

The people who work in the Arts, like myself, do not work for huge amounts of cash, we do it because we believe in it and we have a genuine passion to share the benefits of the Arts with others.

Anyway, read on and judge for yourselves.

The article below, from Mark Brown, appeared in The Guardian on Tuesday 17th February.

Arts and culture being ‘systematically removed from UK education system’

Warwick commission report finds fewer pupils taking GCSEs in design and drama, and describes arts audiences as overwhelmingly middle class and white

Patrick Brill AKA Bob and Roberta Smith
 Artist Bob and Roberta Smith: ‘We must totally overhaul the importance of art, design, dance, craft and drama.’ Photograph: Eamonn McCabe

Creativity, culture and the arts are being systematically removed from the education system, with dramatic falls in the number of pupils taking GCSEs in design, drama and other craft-related subjects, a new report has revealed.

A year in the writing, the Warwick commission report, published on Tuesday, examines all aspects of the creative arts sector: from film, theatre and dance to video games, pop music and fashion. It estimates the sector represents 5% of the British economy valued at £76.9bn.

The report describes arts audiences as overwhelmingly middle class and white. It says that the wealthiest, best educated and least ethnically diverse 8% of society make up nearly half of live music audiences and a third of theatregoers and gallery visitors.

Vikki Heywood, the chair of the commission, said two of the most eye-opening aspects of the inquiry were to do with cultural education and the lack of diversity in arts audiences.

The cultural and creative economies were one ecosystem, she said, and policymakers needed to realise that “if you fiddle around with the education system at one end then something at the other end goes wonky”.

Some of the most striking statistics are around education. Between 2003 and 2013 there was a 50% drop in the GCSE numbers for design and technology, 23% for drama and 25% for other craft-related subjects. In 2012-13, only 8.4% of students combined arts and science at AS level. The number of arts teachers in schools has fallen by 11% since 2010 and in schools where a subject has been withdrawn, drama and performance has dropped by 23%, art by 17% and design technology by 14%.

The report highlights a downward trend in participation in most cultural activities. For example, the number of five- to 10-year-olds who engaged in dance activities was down from 43% in 2008-09 to 30% in 2013-14.

The artist Bob and Roberta Smith said CP Snow’s “two cultures” distinction of 50 years ago – that society was split into science and the humanities – had been made “irrelevant by the emergence of the power of digital technology”.

He said: “We must totally overhaul the importance of art, design, dance, craft and drama, and teach them in a more contemporary and computer literate way to every child so that we do not deny our young people access to a £76.9bn economy.”

The arts broadcaster Lord Melvyn Bragg said he was glad to see schools and education mentioned so strongly. He said: “In my view, investment in the creative arts is the key to the lives of so many people in this country, and to the richer life of the country itself.”

The report insists that arts education should be an entitlement for all children. It believes the government’s focus on science, technology, engineering and maths needs also to include the arts. It says: “Policymakers are obsessed with a siloed subject-based curriculum and early specialisation in arts or science disciplines that ignores and obscures discussion around the future need for all children to enjoy an education that encourages creativity.”

David Lan, the artistic director of the Young Vic who served as a commissioner, said society needed creative scientists and that pupils’ involvement in dance, theatre, music and film would enhance their success in other non-arts subjects and “encourage young people to be hungry for equality and democracy”.

The report highlights “barriers and inequalities” that prevent “equal access for everyone to a rich cultural education and the opportunity to live a creative life”.

Statistics include the fact that higher social groups account for 87% of all museum visits.

The report says publicly funded arts “are predominantly accessed by an unnecessarily narrow social, economic, ethnic and educated demographic that is not fully representative of the UK’s population”.

Heywood said: “Progress on equality of participation and opportunity is too slow and we are all culturally and economically impoverished as a result.”

The findings also feed in to the ongoing debate around career opportunities for people from lower income families with Julie Walters recently telling the Guardian that she would not have a chance of making it as an actor if she was starting out today.

The report says it strongly suspects there are “lower than average numbers of students from low income backgrounds” in vocational and higher education courses which feed the cultural and creative sector but stresses “further systematic research is needed”.

The director Richard Eyre said the report showed an “absolute divide” between those who enjoyed the arts and those who felt excluded from them. He said: “The ‘choice’ of going to the theatre or the opera or an art gallery is a choice that doesn’t exist for vast numbers of people in this country, who, if they feel anything at all about art, feel disenfranchised.”

Last month, Chris Bryant, the shadow minister for culture, said one of his priorities if he became a minister would be to encourage diversity and fairer funding in the arts as well as encouraging the arts world to hire people from a variety of backgrounds.

He told the Guardian: “I am delighted that Eddie Redmayne won [a Golden Globe for best actor], but we can’t just have a culture dominated by Eddie Redmayne and James Blunt and their ilk.

“Where are the Albert Finneys and the Glenda Jacksons? They came through a meritocratic system. But it wasn’t just that. It was also that the writers were writing stuff for them. So is the BBC, ITV or Channel 4 doing that kind of gritty drama, which reflects [the country] more? We can’t just have Downton programming ad infinitum and think that just because we’ve got some people in the servants’ hall, somehow or other we’ve done our duty by gritty drama.”

The report was written by 16 arts sector leaders including Nicholas Serota, the Tate director, fomer ballerina Deborah Bull, and Roly Keating, the chief executive of the British Library.

Heywood said she wanted the report to be on the desks of all relevant secretaries of state after May’s general election. She said: “It has got to be a conversation that politicians can’t avoid.”

Among the recommendations are for a joined-up national plan in England that would involve civil servants and politicians from the the relevant departments: education, business, and culture, media and sport.

It calls for a free digital public space to be developed allowing all publicly funded creative content to be easily discoverable.

One of the biggest problems for the arts is national and local funding cuts, with Arts Council England cut by 32% and local government by 40% between 2010 and 2015.

The amount of money given to the arts – 0.3% of the total public spend – is “infinitesimal” compared with what they generate, the report says.

Further spending cuts to the arts “will undermine the ecosystem, creating a downward spiral in which fewer risks are taken, resulting in less talent development, declining returns and therefore further cuts in investment.”

The report has been widely welcomed. Sir Peter Bazalgette, the chairman of Arts Council England, said: “Two critical themes leap out of this welcome report – the importance of improving access to the arts, and that culture and the creative industries are one entity. The report’s proposals contain much welcome new thinking.”

Tessa Ross, the chief executive of the National Theatre, said the report made important points on “the diversity of the work on our stages, of our workforce and our audience, the need to enshrine arts education as an entitlement to all young people, including the most disadvantaged, and the desire of national organisations to extend our reach”.

The Department for Education said: “As part of our plan for education, we are ensuring all pupils experience a broad and balanced curriculum which will prepare them for life in modern Britain – the arts are a key part of this.

“We are clear that arts education should be every bit as rigorous as the rest of the school curriculum and we have strengthened the national curriculum in these subjects and reformed the music and art GCSEs and A levels to make sure this is the case.

“For 2015-16, we are providing £109m to support music, art and cultural education projects – an increase of £17m from last year – allowing thousands more pupils to benefit from a wide range of enriching activities.”

Original article can be found here.

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