A thought on writing

'But why this urge to speak things, rather than make do with observing them? Where does it come from, this compulsion writers have to turn into words everything that touches them or holds their attention? Would it not be more sensible to prune and look after those trees, before describing them? But both the one and the other are necessary. Once men thought that uttering the true name of a god conferred full power over him: the priests were accordingly careful to keep it to themselves. There was a profound truth in this belief. Whoever seizes a landscape, a moment, a light, with suitable words, cures them - provisionally, at least - of this malady where everything dissolves, disappears, escapes us. Where do they go, all these moments, these lives, and our life? A beautiful poem, a well-wrought phrase keeps them, encloses them, gives shape to what is no more than vapour and cannot be grasped. In that way a person, without being entirely mistaken, perhaps, can believe he is somewhat less alien in the world, somewhat less helpless in the face of time's brilliant stratagems.'

That's a quote from a prose-poem I was reading earlier today, by Phillipe Jaccottet, translated by Jennie Feldman and Stephen Romer. It's from a great Anvil Press anthology, Into The Deep Street, Seven Modern French Poets. My favourite phrase there is even better in French, due to the wonder of the reflexive verb, 'sans se tromper completement, peut-etre'.

Is great art for everyone possible?

The event I mentioned in my previous post is ‘Great Art For Everyone’ – a day of debate, ideas and discussion that is taking place at The Sage Gateshead on 24 March. It precedes The Journal Culture Awards at Northern Stage that evening – a celebration of some of the best arts and culture events of the last year in North East England.

We’ve posed a number of ‘provocations’ for attendees and our panels, relating to the mission of the Arts Council – ‘Great Art for Everyone’ – and how it can be achieved. The aim is to bring people together to debate the ways to achieve great art for everyone. I don’t expect pat solutions, and we won't be offering any, but explorations, ideas, collaborations, some mutual learning, some aching ‘listening muscles’ by the end of the day.

The ‘provocations’ include
- ‘Digital technology: how far behind is the arts sector, and should the DAFT (‘digital as a foreign tongue’) stop worrying and let the digitally savvy take over?’
- International working: jollies and jaunts or deep relationships that spark new ideas and create great art?
- Sustainability: in the ecology of the arts sector, which parts need to change, evolve and maybe even stop, for the whole to become more resilient?

There are a number more. You can see them all on the event blog that’s been set up at greatartforeveryone.wordpress.com. On the day you’ll be able to watch live streaming of the main sessions, follow a Twitter stream, and interact online. You can also share your thoughts on the blog beforehand.

It would be great to get some takes on these questions from Arts Counselling readers beyond the North East and beyond England. People in 26 countries have read it in the last week. How much of these debates applies in those other places and situations, other politics and traditions? What might we learn from your experience? Visit the site and help us out!

Are making music and cooking connected?

I mentioned in passing earlier this month that I’d attended a seminar on commissioning opera. This was to mark the creation of Skellig the opera – with libretto by novelist David Almond and music by composer Tod Machover. One of the things I didn’t know before that day was that Tod Machover was also involved in the technology used in Guitar Hero, in his role at MIT. The new RSA Journal has an article by Tod about the creation of ‘personal instruments’ for opening up genuine musical creation (as opposed to Guitar Hero’s game-based application of the technology) for those without musical training. It’s particularly interesting to learn how it has been used to enable musical creation by people with physical impediments that mean traditional instruments are impractical. He also talks about the role of the youth chorus in Skellig and his aspirations for ‘a new model for the interrelationship between experts and amateurs in musical listening, performance and creation’.

He goes on to make an analogy with food and cooking which I think reveals more of a challenge than he suggests. He claims we ‘all’ have a food culture or ecology in which appreciating the achievements of experts – the Michelin-starred chefs and so on – sits happily alongside our own participation in both daily, improvised cooking expressing our personality and special occasion meals. Whilst there is evidence of that in some parts, there is also plenty of evidence that actually the distant relationship many have with the arts is mirrored in an even more dislocated relationship to food and cooking, with many people simply not eating well at all, losing the traditional skills and rituals associated with food – and the family and social capital that goes with it. I can’t imagine my life without either music or cooking – I get frustrated if I go too long without playing or listening to music or being able to cook - but there are many people who can. (And after all I did work as a chef for 6 years before working in the arts...) To create that healthy ecology in the arts we have to address some very big issues. (See Jamie Oliver’s ‘Ministry of Food’ work for just one take on this.)

The new RSA Journal, coincidentally, has another article that might give some clues as to why this is the case, Crossing the class divide by Lynsey Hanley. It’s worth a look.

Does art help keep you mentally healthy?

What do you do to help keep your head straight, to avoid or wash away life’s stresses and strains? Mindapples wants to know what the mental health equivalent of 5 fruit and veg-a-day might be. Many of those who took part in the Arts Debate suggested the arts were useful in this respect. ‘Art makes me feel less alone’, for instance – a phrase so good we use it twice in the graphics of the Arts Council plan. Drop in and tell them what you do.

What do I do after a hard day at the executive coalface to keep myself more or less healthy, I hear you ask? Listen to music as I drive home – although simply buying records can help! Read a book over breakfast. Play fiveaside or go to the gym. Have a meal at the kitchen table with my family. Noodle around on the guitar. Sing some old songs.

I don’t write poetry for my health, by the way – in fact I take it so seriously it can have the reverse effect on my mood. (Some years ago, whilst masquerading briefly as an academic, I published some research that suggested writing even bad poetry could be therapeutic, and there was some evidence that craft helped, but insisting on trying to be really good – let alone ‘great’ – and feeling you’d failed could be bad for the nerves.)

Right, I’m off to see a play now, but as it promises ‘seduction, perversion and love’ and warns of ‘full male and female nudity and scenes of a violent and sexual nature’, I’m not sure what it will do for my mental health!

Mission impossible?

The Arts Council plan for 2008-2011 is newly published, with a snappy new mission: Great art for everyone. It’s certainly a lot catchier than the previous 'mission', about putting the arts at the heart of national life, and people at the heart of the arts. That was also particularly hard to say if you have my now mishapen-Lancastrian vowel sounds.

I know a lot of debate and heartache went into settling on those four words. It’ll be interesting to see how people react – with enthusiasm, sarcasm or indifference. Although there are elements of the old mission statement I rather miss, I think it’s a much clearer statement of our fundamental purpose. It does, of course, beg some debate. The first reflection I’ve seen is from an Irish choreographer Fearghus Ó Conchúir who spoke recently at an Arts Council event in Yorkshire and wrote about it on his blog Bodies and Buildings. It brings out some of the nuances of that clear-seeming mission. I especially agree that, as he puts it, ‘art needs to attend to the uncomfortable as well and that people can gather in that discomfort as much as in the balm of celebration.’

There are some other provocations on this topic, all arising from the same day, available on the Arts Council’s website here, including one by the publisher of the fantastic Ian Clayton book I recommended here. I'm interested in how we bring out the nuances, without losing the simplicity - or is that really mission impossible?

Sing a holiday hymn...

By the power of 'post options' this is delivered while I'm on holiday, just to keep you interested...


Here's two quotes I'll be pondering before going back to work:


"... if you have to choose between life and happiness or art, remember always to choose life and happiness.'' Clement Greenberg

‘Expecting love and understanding in return for work is probably the chief source of misery for creative people. So honour your friends, lovers and family, for only they can give you the recognition you need, and don’t look for it in art.’ Jan Verwoert, Frieze May 2008

Identity and aesthetics = chicken and egg?

The Sustained Theatre project, which has launched a website and a number of provocative documents, is a rich example of what can happen when a funder – in this case Arts Council England – opens up projects to leadership by artists. The Whose Theatre report into black theatre led to Sustained Theatre which led to a number of papers, including the one by Professor Gus John and Doctor Samina Zahir, Speaking Truth to Power, which aims to shake up the national debate on ethnicity, identity and the arts.

The paper, which is the first epistolary strategic report I’ve ever seen, demonstrates, perhaps inadvertently, how bloody hard our job is, at times. How do we change the way the arts reflect society, and ensure proper openness for people who are not white and middle class, without putting people in boxes, limiting identity and aesthetics and encouraging those in power to simply tick boxes? I’ve never been keen on the term ‘the sector’ which the artist steering group wished to use for the black theatre sector – to avoid the ethnic determinant – and it is clear that neither are many artists, some of whom prefer the term ‘black theatre movement’.

John and Zahir don’t agree with each other on this, or indeed, on much at all – or so it sometimes seems. Their debates are reflective of genuine difficulties, and the paper opens up a debate about aesthetics and identity I find really interesting. I think my aesthetics have played a large part in shaping - changing - my own identity, for instance, in that it was books and literature, not 'background', that led me into education and then employment in the arts. I rarely see my own background reflected well on stage or in galleries, and will swing for the next person who equates the white working class with Shameless-style fecklessness. (Okay, I won’t literally swing for them, as I’m now part of the middle class diaspora of my original ‘ethnic’ group, but they’ll feel the full force of a well-made point, don’t you worry. Then I'll go home to watch A Kind of Loving.)

I also put a tick against this quote: ‘We really must stop fashioning the world on the basis of the peculiarities of London.’ But that’s a whole other post…

How did I end up on stage with an Undertone?

It must be conference season. After the one on social capital I wrote about recently, last week I had the pleasure of chairing ‘Our Creative Talent’, an event organised by three partners: Arts Council England, Voluntary Arts Network and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. The event marked the launch of a major piece of research into participation in the arts through voluntary and amateur groups, and through informal learning. You can download it here. There are some pretty impressive statistics about people’s involvement in the voluntary and amateur arts, although as with most ‘groundbreaking’ research, it raises as many further questions as it gives answers. (Or at least that’s what the researchers were trying to persuade me...)

Speakers ranged from Margaret Hodge to Feargal Sharkey, once an Undertone now head of British Music Rights and possibly Britain’s only strategic ex-pop star via Alan Davey and Robin Simpson (whose blogs I heartily recommend: start at Cultural Playing Field.) There were various workshops, then a panel session where I had that almost impossible task of spotting people put their hands up.

There was a really positive atmosphere throughout the day and it is clear that the voluntary arts are seen differently than was the case when I first wielded a long-arm stapler in their cause. There are lots of questions to work through though: can the sector deliver on quality consistently enough? How is the sector changing given the aging population? How do we encourage better connections with the professional and funded sectors (the right, better connections)? How do we cope with the destruction of adult education in this country? For starters.

You can read all about the conference, and listen to some of the sessions on the Voluntary Arts England site. (Follow the Flickr link there enough and you can see me on stage with Feargal Sharkey. I’m not embarrassed to say that gives me a thrill. Click here to see a seasonal Undertones classic. Or here to see him in full pre-smoking ban glory on my favourite Undertones song. )

What deep insights did I have while off work?

Over on Arts Professional, someone thought I might have been visited by the Great Peter Street Thought Police last week, when actually I was just on leave. I spent much of the week in a nostalgic reverie kicked off by looking at Finnegan’s Wake (see last couple of posts) and an old flyer left in its pages, from Paris in 1986. And as M. le President est arrivé in London today, I thought I’d share. If it has no relevance, forgive me.

I was drawn into thinking of a year that probably changed my view of the arts in ways I didn’t understand even then. I was studying French and English Literature at Liverpool and spent a (not very) academic year at Paris VIII in Saint-Denis. (Best known for the World Cup Stadium and riots these days, but a lot less edgy than Toxteth back in 1985.) I immersed myself in what I then didn’t call the arts in a way I’ve rarely done since. Loads of gigs – David Thomas, Sonic Youth, Violent Femmes, The Pogues, Prefab Sprout, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (in his fantastically violent early period) and one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen, by Microdisney. I interviewed Del Amitri for my mate's fanzine. (Trout Fishing in Leytonstone, anoraks!) I even started on the slippery slope to really liking jazz, seeing Dave Brubeck, Sarah Vaughan and Archie Shepp. I also discovered African music from some of the friends I made in the halls, who were mainly not from France, but from Francophone Africa.

I read constantly, though on reflection I think 21 is too young to read the whole of Proust – I’d need a serious illness to repeat it now! I remember discovering Robert Desnos through a course I studied, and pretending to understand literary theory. (I missed out on the fact that Deleuze and Guattari were teaching there at the time, though I think I did once meet Jim Haynes.)

I got an annual pass for the Pompidou Centre and spent days on end there, and was inspired by the atmosphere and the connections it made, which seemed hugely different to anything I’d so far experienced at home. I did a Saturday morning course to understand modern art, which really opened doors for me. I sat through theatre I couldn’t quite understand. And I spent long afternoons catching up with the history of cinema, especially the black and white moody bits. (Although one of my fondest memories is of going to watch Absolute Beginners one sunny Spring day, thoroughly enjoying its neon gaudiness and then walking out into a bright Spring afternoon and putting my shades on… I’ve never dared watch the film again, because I just know it’s rubbish.)

I wrote loads of really awful poems and songs, and went busking on the Paris Metro. (Don’t Twice It’s Alright and Folsom Prison Blues, since you ask.) You can, should you so desire read one of the slightly better ones, archived from a 1987 edition of the magnificent The North at the Poetry Library’s magazine archive here. It was between poems by Edwin Morgan and Peter Porter which was a big deal for me at the time, and even now.)

I had ‘downloaded’ my favourite records onto about 20 or 30 C90 tapes (younger readers, ask an old person) which certainly is one argument for the benefits of the digital, personalised age. (I’ll be able to listen to a choice of 10,000 songs in my car on the way home tonight!)

What lessons did I draw from my nostalgia? The ‘cultural offer’ needs time and an absence of exams to flourish in a young person, and don’t let them think of it as culture but just exciting stuff. Great cities are brilliant and exciting, and big institutions can have a fantastically personal impact on individuals. Connections and hybrids are what make the world creative and exciting, not purity, and not boxing things off too strictly in terms of ‘culture’ seems like a good idea. And Microdisney records still sound great but ‘not-as-good-as-live’ whilst Finnegan’s Wake is still impossible to read.

Here Comes more of Everybody?

Anyone interested in finding out more about Clay Shirky’s thinking can now listen to a recording of his recent talk at the RSA. Stemming from his book it focuses on how, as he puts it, the digital realm is now ‘technologically boring enough to be socially interesting.’ He talks about Flash mobs and political protest, Facebook protest groups (though not the one called ‘The Arts Council needs a f***** slap’, strangely enough) - and how ‘organisation’ is changed, changed utterly. He’s an engaging speaker and admits to being a lapsed cyber-utopian, aware of the innocence or naivete of much of what’s said about the new networked, distributed world.

A number of reviews of HCE have linked it to Charles Leadbetter’s We Think. This seems to me much more guilty of idealistic enthusiasm, judging by the chapters I read when Charles made it available in draft. (I suspect Shirky would say he's still thinking about the technology a little too much.) Wikipedia is an interesting model of all sorts of things, but I couldn’t help muttering ‘but how do you make a living in this world?’ at a number of points. Anyway, his site has lots of interesting material - shared, for free - so have a look around.

Interestingly given my previous post, you can, for example, see Charles' notes for a talk about The Web and the Avant Garde. He doesn’t mention Joyce, but what the notes say about Guy Debord and Facebook make me think he may be a little too easily pleased. I can’t see that the fun loving Situationist would really have been busy collecting ‘friends’ and thinking it was a great advance in democratising the spectactle…

Why would you work for the Arts Council?

With this site I want to stimulate thought and discussion about how the arts sector might need to react to the changing world. I hope, in doing that, to give some insight into the kinds of things I’m thinking about as I lead the North East office of Arts Council England. It ‘s not going to be ‘behind the scenes of everyday life at ACE’. (You need to come and hang out in our kitchen to get the flavour of that.) But I hope it will help to show that people who work for the Arts Council, even at the executive level, are not ‘faceless suits’, robotic bureaucrats, secret agents of the state, or philistines working in deep cover so we can put a stop to theatre.

Reading and listening to some of the reaction to our recent funding decisions, you might think that’s exactly what we are. I don’t plan to deconstruct the media coverage here, but the depiction of Arts Council staff in some comments is one reason I’ve decided to start my posting with five paragraphs on why I work for Arts Council England. Then you’ll at least know some of where I’m coming from. (And, by the way, I think they’re pretty common in our staff!)

PASSION The arts are central to my life and my enthusiasm for it, as well as my darker moments. The arts are how I think and feel my way through life. I’ve had my life changed by the arts and I want more people to have that happen to them. Although I don’t come from a background rich in the arts (few books in the house, didn’t go to the theatre until Shakespeare time at O Level, no music lessons etc – continue until parenthesis becomes the Four Yorkshiremen Sketch…) somehow good teachers and a fantastic village library helped grow a love of reading. Then punk and the exhilarating discovery that you didn’t have to practise for years to be creative with a guitar and your voice fuelled an obsession with music, which through following my curious nose led me to writing. And that led me to performing, editing, publishing, promoting and from there off into other art forms again. And I’ve always wanted to share that passion.

OPPORTUNITY I think that is too important to leave to chance and the market and want more people to try the arts and see what place they might have in their lives. That’s going to vary – from 24-7 passion, employment and life’s work to occasional pleasure and night out or emotional release at key times in life. And that’s fine. Goodness knows what good luck led me to the arts. My parents were always supportive but puzzled. (My dad worked in a carpet warehouse and my mum was a secretary most of her life.) But I know there are lots of people who could make or enjoy the arts who miss that almost random occurrence. Arts Council’s work and investment multiplies the chances for it to happen. (And no, I don’t think you can guarantee it happening by audience development or by ‘target-olatry’. It’s kind of the reverse of the fact that healthy living doesn’t guarantee you won’t get cancer, but makes your chances better.)

RESPONSIBILITY I believe in public funding of the arts. The arts play a range of vital roles in healthy societies, including economic, and that can both require and deserve government support. That means someone has to make choices – and that shouldn’t be the government. The arts are by nature always going to be in opposition to Power at times and need to be free from direct political influence. Of course there is a general influence that cannot be avoided, but that is the deal those who accept public funding accept. I was always told that if you want a job doing well you do it yourself, and eventually reached a point where I wanted to take greater responsibility for decision-making than sitting on panels. I didn’t want to whinge from the outside. I did that at times early in my career and it made nothing happen. This is at times a sacrifice (my publishing career as a poet has slowed to a crawl due to avoiding ‘conflicts of interest’, for instance – or at least I like to think that’s why!) but I get huge satisfaction from doing what I think is an important job that makes things happen for other people. I don’t want to sound noble – I am far better paid and more secure than when I was a freelance writer teacher and project manager, and am grateful for that.

CHANGE. Most of the things I’ve done in my career have started off out of enthusiasm and dissatisfaction. I started a poetry magazine because the ones I was getting published in weren’t good enough. I published books because writers I wanted to champion needed help. I devised arts projects to change the world or my corner of it… I work at the Arts Council because we improve things for artists, organisations and audiences. We are also supporting them as their needs change. In the last 10 years the face of the arts in the North East has changed dramatically. So has the Arts Council. I know both can get better yet and want to be part of that.

ROOTS I am still a writer when working at ACE but only in a way. There are lots of artists here – people who you might in other circumstances, call peers. We have to manage some process that would drive other writers and artists mad, I’m more than happy to admit that. But we do our human utmost to hold onto the roots of our passion to create opportunity and positive change for the arts. (As a member of the national executive team I also take my geographical and cultural roots, which spread across the north of England from Preston, Lancs to Preston-on-Tees, into a national context. But that’s another story!)

So, five words, to kick off. Lots more to come, not about me.