Category Archives: The Arts

2020 Vision

27 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by in Birmingham, creativity, get published, Publication, Short Stories, Short Story, The Arts, workshops, Writers, writing

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Hmm, let’s start by looking back.

My last post was concerning the huge boost to arts funding that would become a reality after Labour won the 2019 general election – well, that never happened. A bit of a shock if I’m honest. I’m a bit of an optimist, and I was convinced that Labour’s argument couldn’t fail, but it did, so what does the future hold? Well, not a lot if you’re going to sit around waiting for someone to do things for you. It seems that the right-wing have public opinion sown up, thanks to their super-rich media-moguls, but that doesn’t mean we can’ bring about change in our own lives – just look at the huge impact Greta Thunberg has had upon the world simply by going on strike!

We need to make things happen ourselves – don’t worry, this isn’t the part where I hurl internet platitudes at you, ‘Be the lobster you want to be!’ So what am I doing, apart from displaying my fondness for the word lobster? A few things. Me and a talented friend are putting together a book. We’re both fed up of being at the mercy of literary gatekeepers and decided we’d do it ourselves, but this isn’t some self-publishing vanity project – to be fair, much of the self-publishing world isn’t. This will be a labour of love to a part of our city that means a lot to both of us. We’ll be documenting in words, both factual and fictional, and images, a part of this glorious place we live in that could soon be no more. Some of you may even buy it – now there’s a thought.

I continue to scratch away with my own writing. I will have a short story out this year in a Birmingham themed collection from Dostoyevsky Wannabe, and I continue to send words out to potential publishers – chin up, no man’s put me down yet…

There are opportunities out there for creative types like me and I shall be doing my best to snag a few of them. I enjoy working with others, and unlocking other people’s potential, so I’ll be looking out for more stuff like that as well as stand alone projects. A few are already on my radar – it must be this 2020 vision.

I’ve also agreed to climb Snowden in the dark – climbing it in daylight is too easy! That last statement is something I’d never say. I’ll post some more info regarding this soon.

January has nearly gone and I’ve not done half as much as I intended to. I will do more in February. See you there.

Waiting For The Great Leap Forward.

06 Friday Dec 2019

Posted by in Billy Bragg, Birmingham, NHS, Poetry, Politics, Special Needs, teaching, The Arts, writing

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Don’t switch off. This blog is about education and arts funding – something that enriches all our lives. Please, read on.

I went to a political rally last night. There, it’s out the bag. Shush, I hear you hiss. This blog is meant for writing and creativity, don’t sully it with the dirty world of politics! I understand that some people feel that way. Hell, I even have friends that, after years of arguing, have decided that we should avoid that distasteful area altogether. However, here in the UK, we are on the cusp of something truly horrific, the handing over of absolute power to serial liar, racist and adulterer, Boris Johnson, or the implementation of a radical new state that will nurture and develop creativity, culture and ultimately happiness through placing a Labour government in power. This, of course, is an oversimplification, but not by much.

Have you guessed which way I’m voting yet?

It was a bitter-cold, blustery night in Digbeth, in what used to be Birmingham’s industrial heart. Digbeth, in recent years, has been transformed into a creative oasis of small digital companies, arts organisations, entrepreneurs and entertainment that has been embraced by Brummies, Midlanders and beyond – Stephen Spielburg has shot a film here has have many other established filmmakers. My son and I queued with many others to hear Jeremy Corbyn speak. What! Corbyn, chief antisemite and all-round devil’s spawn? Yes, and no. I’ve seen Corbyn speak on several occasions and he’s always struck me as a caring, vibrant man who is genuinely interested in others, and someone who wants to change the UK for the better. The way he’s been presented in the media is wholly at odds with the man you meet in person, but that’s a whole blog post in itself, probably a series of blogs. However, just to touch on that briefly, this summer I was walking around a museum in Prague and I heard some Americans talking to a European about how biased the media is in the States. They said, for impartiality, they got their news from the BBC. I failed to fight back a laugh and received a strange look or two. I didn’t attempt to ‘correct’ their view, I was on holiday, but it wasn’t that long ago that I also felt that the BBC were impartial. Not any more. In this election campaign, we have seen the Tory bias of the BBC cranked up to previously unimagined heights with edited interviews and news footage that show Boris Johnson in a positive light being passed off as mistakes. With that toxic atmosphere in mind, it was wonderful to see so many young people, and people from diverse backgrounds last night.

Jamelia

We got in early, too bloody early as a friend had told me he’d been turned away from events before, so best to get there early – my legs were killing me by the end. However, our punctuality meant that we got a very good spot down the front. Angela Rayner, Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, compared the evening with aplomb and passion. We were treated to first hand accounts of years of Tory cuts from union reps and support staff in education as well as the music from Kioko, an up and coming local band, poetry from three local poets, and the general secretaries of the NEU teachers union – the largest in the UK, and Brum’s very own Jamelia.

Jamelia wasn’t there to talk about her impressive pop career, but about the support, she’d received from the state when she was growing up in Birmingham. She wanted others to take note that she had been supported, and her mother, by our incredible NHS and state education, and that she wants others to have the same opportunities that she has had. It was a very passionate and honest speech where she admitted that she’d never voted before and that it would be her and her eighteen year old daughter’s first time on December the 12th.

Finally, Jeremy Corbyn took to the stage and laid out clearly how a Labour government will transform education by increasing funding levels to above 2010 rates, creating a National Education Service, rebuilding Ofsted to support teaching rather than condemn it, funding a pupil arts passport that ring-fences arts spending, creating fully funded nursery places for all, promoting a love of learning via whichever route best suits, and much, much more.

The reason I felt the need to write this here was because of Labour’s stance regarding the arts. Corbyn came on after the poets and he was genuinely moved by their performance and spoke of the power of all the arts to transform lives. This is something he is passionate about, not something, like Johnson, that he believes is there for those who can afford it. Up until three years ago, I was an art teacher in a busy special needs school. I started in education when funding for the arts was in place and I saw the positive effect it had upon the challenging children that I worked with. That has now gone. The arts have been cut from many school’s curriculums with some schools even dropping to four and a half days a week because they can not afford to pay staff. Labour will not only reverse cuts to school funding, but they will also increase funding. If it hadn’t have been for arts lessons in school I would have dropped out of education, no doubt about it. For some pupils, creativity in lessons like art, music, dance etc. is the only thing that keeps them going. Our current Tory government does not care one jot about this – they can afford to pay for the arts.

I took a lot of hope away from last night. Hope, because we have an opposition that is fighting for the things that are important to me and so many other. Hope, because Digbeth was full of young people ready to fight for what is theirs, and hope because, despite what the mainstream media are telling us, people want change. Talk to people who are out there knocking on doors. People want change and it’s up to all of us to ensure that on December 12th that’s what they get.

I went to see Billy Bragg on Tuesday, also in Digbeth, and he spoke about the power of talking to people. He told us about his activism to halt the fascists taking over Barking and Dagenham Council. A handful of BNP candidates had been elected to the council and there was a real fear that at the upcoming local elections in 2010 that they could take control of the council. Labour members took to the streets and campaigned. They knocked on doors and spoke to people. They waited for the result and hoped that they’d pegged them back. They hoped that the BNP majority would not increase. The result came in. Every single member of the BNP lost their seat. Change can come, but we have to get out there and make it happen. Don’t sentence the UK to another five years of Tory lies and cuts. Save our education, fund our arts, vote Labour.

Panel Show

13 Saturday Oct 2018

Posted by in Art, Birmingham Literature Festival, Comics, Drawing, Ikon Gallery, Inktober, The Arts, writing

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Yesterday, No.1 Daughter and I went to a marvellous workshop at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. The workshop was run by Dr Nicola Streeten and Cath Tate as part of the Birmingham Literature Festival.

We looked at visual story telling through greetings cards and graphic novels. Cath talked us through her work and considerations for greetings cards and Nicola the same for graphic novels. The two hours flew by and incorporated some fun and challenging drawing activities. The culmination of this was all of us producing our own four panel stories. The daughter and I agreed to leave our work there as a backdrop for a talk today, so I’ve recreated/completed the first panel above here.

Here are some pics of the work we produced on the night.

Art Cull.

20 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by in Culture, Education, The Arts

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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.