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Garrie Fletcher

~ writing and all that

Garrie Fletcher

Tag Archives: The Guardian

Top 10 Books Writers Should Read.

25 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by fletcherski in writing

≈ 2 Comments

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DBC Pierre, The Guardian, Top 10 Books Writers Should Read, writing

Here’s a link to an interesting article in The Guardian from DBC Pierre. These 10 books helped him to write and as one of those books was the wonderful, Vernon God Little, it may be worth taking a look.

Has anyone else read any of the 10 books below?

Article link.

Vernon God Little

1. To generate early inspiration and feel part of a club:
Daily Rituals by Mason Currey
Writing can make you feel like a weirdo if you don’t already – but feeling like a weirdo is useless psychology for the job, hence this little book. Mason Currey has carefully compiled the daily habits and personal foibles of 161 great writers, artists, scientists and thinkers, including one who stood on his head to cure creative block. By the end of this book, our carpet-glue habit looks normal.

2. To know how many rules we’re about to break:
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr and EB White
The rules of modern writing have been around for a century, and this tiny volume is where they spent all that time. William Strunk Jr, professor of English at Cornell University, first printed the book privately for his students at the end of the first world war. Although it’s been updated, it still smells of chalk and tweed, and still inspires us to do things properly, if only via a sense that we might be shouted at if we don’t.

3. To grasp the difference between one character and another:
Distinction by Pierre Bourdieu
This is strictly speaking a sociology text, but don’t be put off by its density, its diagrams or its tables: it’s a gold mine. Apparently, no judgment of taste is innocent, meaning that everyone is some kind of snob. Here, Bourdieu literally maps the kinds of snob we are, from the food we serve our friends and the knick-knacks on our dressers to the way we value pregnant women and sunsets. Although it’s modelled on the French bourgeoisie, we can still see all our colleagues and neighbours – if not ourselves – inside.

4. To worship at a shrine:
The Chambers Dictionary
Sure, all the words are online, but the 2.37kg of this physical dictionary are a stunning daily reminder of what we’re doing and what our toolbox looks like. Thinking isn’t writing, ideas aren’t writing; only writing is writing and we should make it exist in reality, which means ultimately not on a screen. Words behave differently when they sit in fresh air, and the Chambers rounds them up on silky paper. If you’re serious about this, carry the thing around, browse it at random. It’s a living zoo for writers, and the battery life is second to none.

5. To skip the degree in psychology:
Instant Analysis by David J Lieberman
A character’s struggles in a book will always have their psychology. We don’t need a PhD in order to write them, we just see the symptoms around us and describe them as they appear. But there’s an edge to be gained from looking deeper, if only to prevailing simplifications. Lieberman’s book tackles 100 common complexes (“Why do I do favours for people I don’t even like?”) in a couple of pages each. Obviously we’ll also see ourselves in there, but there’s nothing like naked horror to get the day started.

6. To discover what villains are born knowing:
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
Originally an instruction manual for princes, this realpolitik masterwork teaches who should be trusted and how to destroy them if they can’t be. The scary thing about The Prince, no doubt responsible for its longevity – 500 years and counting – is how snugly it fits any level of human powerplay,, from an average Thursday night for a courting teen to that lonely, bitter man on the wheelie-bin committee.

7. To get over the feeling that modernity is new:
Satyricon by Petronius Arbiter
Few things can change one’s perspective on human history like seeing how familiar and modern this work from Nero’s time is. Better yet, it’s from a decadence just like ours, brimming with risky sex, pretentious food and self-concern.

8. In case Brexit didn’t show why pure democracy should be sparingly used:
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
No matter the strength of hero or the scale of glory we plan to write about, it never hurts to see how bizarre we can be en masse. Written in beautiful 19th-century prose, this book is a forensic jaunt through history’s strangest crazes.

9. For a smell of literary gasoline igniting:
The Black Book by Lawrence Durrell
It’s one thing to hear of passion and midnight oil, another to see it spilt through a book. These were the pages where 24-year-old Lawrence Durrell found his true voice – it’s worth reading them just to see what that means. One for inspiration.

10. To see what can happen when it all comes together:
Tender Is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
Of all the books I could recommend to show writing in full flight, I pick Tender because it also comes with the unlikely extra shine of an underdog. The Great Gatsby is accepted to be Fitzgerald’s greatest work, but this is secretly his best, a connoisseur’s choice. Which, according to Bourdieu, makes us snobs.

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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