You know, I meant to hit the New Year blogging, and have had several things I wanted to point out/at on here last week, but the snow and some pressing issues rather stole the hours away. I'll try and make up for it this week.
Next time someone tells you that there's less need for a focus on diversity because even the people who don't really get it at least now know 'the rules', or that diversity is 'an add on' to their real arts work and just a burdensome Arts Council box to tick - I'm not making this up for effect, people do say this stuff! - remind them of Lynda La Plante's recent and widely-reported comments. (Overseas readers: she wrote a half decent tv series once, Prime Suspect, and has been banging out crooks with heart and police dramas with diminishing returns ever since.) As reported here by the BBC and here by the Telegraph, she feels excluded by the politically correct BBC and that commissioners would 'rather read a little Muslim boy's script' than one by her. “If my name were Usafi Iqbadal and I was 19, then they’d probably bring me in and talk,” said La Plante, apparently.
Well, that made me give three cheers for the BBC - or it would if it were absolutely true. Or if these comments were the last we ever heard of La Plante. Unfortunately I suspect neither is quite the case. Although the range of voices heard on the BBC is broader than it was, there is still a tendency to commission a relatively small set of old faithfuls. It seems very easy to use the same people over and over. (More noticeable, of course, when the person is some way from the tv norm - Griff Rhys Jones doesn't stand out in the same way as even Alan Bennett.)
The theatre has seen a number of precocious debuts of late, it must be time for some new talent, new voices on tv too. How did Griff Rhys Jones corner so many markets, for instance? Most urgently, perhaps, we need to hear the stories and imaginings of those who are most often represented by phantasms - young Muslim men, amongst them, but not exclusively.
The diversifiying of the arts workforce and of the stories the nation tells each other still has a long way to go. Have a look at the comments on some of the other coverage of La Plante's comments and you can see why. Look at the tv schedules and you can see the nonsense of La Plante's comments. If I was a commissioner at the BBC, I'd be forcing her to collaborate with Shazia Mirza, on a comedy drama.
(Hmm, maybe that's why I'm not a commissioner at the BBC...)
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label television. Show all posts
Monday, 11 January 2010
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Own Art generates interest
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an hour long documentary about an Arts Council scheme and thought, ‘you know, the only thing missing there was some criticism.’ But last night’s BBC 1 Imagine documentary on the Own Art scheme was so absolutely positive it could almost have done with someone going ‘hang on a minute, what about…’ The programme, with Alan Yentob, explored ‘a small revolution in art collecting’ as a result of this interest free loan scheme. (Declaration of interest: I chair ArtCo, the trading company of Arts Council England which runs the scheme, alongside a similar one relating to musical instruments.) It was a really fascinating programme, warm, affectionate and optimistic.
It was a great demonstration of not just the worth of the scheme, but of the fascinating and glorious variety of ordinary people. Whatever I might have thought personally of their taste in visual arts, I'd fight for their right to exercise it. Each person spoke eloquently and with passion about their works, and the impact on their lives, their families and how they saw the world. They all contained a little surprise which defied expectations and reminded me how easy (and silly) it is to pigeonhole people and the arts position in their lives. The sculptures next to the collection of Jean Genet books, for instance, turned out to belong a gentle policeman in Yorkshire. And the down-to-earth keeness and curiosity of the Darlington mod and his wife commissioning a portrait - he thought it was mainly of his scooter, but as Alan Yentob pointed out it was entirely of him - made me mad again at how working class is more often used these days as a synonym for dysfunction than as a positive description of decent people like these. Here was an intelligent, discerning and culturally demanding working man, ordinary and unique like most people are if you scratch the surface, without pretension. I could, though, hear snootier parts of the art world sneering even as his portrait was unveiled. Well, to adapt a great new Malcolm Tuckerism, when I want their opinion, I'll give the signal -which is me being sectioned under the Mental Health Act. (Non-British readers: that's a quote from The Thick of It.) Meanwhile, I'd suggest the BBC occasionally add the couple to the commentators on the Culture Show - not instead of but in addition to the expert regulars.
Anyway, dismounting my hobby horses before they gallop away with me, it's a lovely film and I won't let any purists tell me otherwise. I'd say there was something quintessentially English about it, and there is, except that the Scottish Arts Council are very strong partners in Own Art, so will go for British. It's available on the I-player here until 29th December.
It was a great demonstration of not just the worth of the scheme, but of the fascinating and glorious variety of ordinary people. Whatever I might have thought personally of their taste in visual arts, I'd fight for their right to exercise it. Each person spoke eloquently and with passion about their works, and the impact on their lives, their families and how they saw the world. They all contained a little surprise which defied expectations and reminded me how easy (and silly) it is to pigeonhole people and the arts position in their lives. The sculptures next to the collection of Jean Genet books, for instance, turned out to belong a gentle policeman in Yorkshire. And the down-to-earth keeness and curiosity of the Darlington mod and his wife commissioning a portrait - he thought it was mainly of his scooter, but as Alan Yentob pointed out it was entirely of him - made me mad again at how working class is more often used these days as a synonym for dysfunction than as a positive description of decent people like these. Here was an intelligent, discerning and culturally demanding working man, ordinary and unique like most people are if you scratch the surface, without pretension. I could, though, hear snootier parts of the art world sneering even as his portrait was unveiled. Well, to adapt a great new Malcolm Tuckerism, when I want their opinion, I'll give the signal -which is me being sectioned under the Mental Health Act. (Non-British readers: that's a quote from The Thick of It.) Meanwhile, I'd suggest the BBC occasionally add the couple to the commentators on the Culture Show - not instead of but in addition to the expert regulars.
Anyway, dismounting my hobby horses before they gallop away with me, it's a lovely film and I won't let any purists tell me otherwise. I'd say there was something quintessentially English about it, and there is, except that the Scottish Arts Council are very strong partners in Own Art, so will go for British. It's available on the I-player here until 29th December.
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Any appetite for a naked lunch?
I join the dots between things and look for patterns. I probably over-do it at times, but it’s how my brain works. Here’s my latest set of dots.
Firstly a phrase echoing from the IFACCA Summit, Shelagh Wrights’s diagnosis that the arts suffer from ‘dodgy advocacy’, ran through my thinking – actually more worrying – about some themes from the IPPR/RSA event about the future of the public sector in the North East I mentioned last week. Themes like the need to acknowledge the unworkability of current ways before innovation kicks in.
Then that connected up to an essay I found via Matthew Taylor blogging about ‘policy-based evidence making’ with the rather wonderful title of ‘On bullshit in cultural policy practice and research’. In it, Dr Eleonora Belfiore uses research around evidence for ‘the impact of the arts’, as a case study in bullshit, that mode of discourse which puts persuasion above accuracy, what she describes as an ‘indifference to how things really are’. (Just for the record I think she’s right in general, but rather harsh on the arts, coming across at times as the kind of academic who’d be happier just having cultural policy and no actual messy culture.)
I then wondered if the current collective mindset of the publicly-funded arts and cultural sector is open and self-critical enough often enough to imagine all possible futures. (I include in that the funders involved, including government.) Have we become too accustomed to growth? Do we still believe that someone somewhere will have a pot of money they need to use at just the right moment –? For all our needs? What might we have to give up to respond to climate change? There is strong evidence for the impact of the arts, more than Belfiore can admit for her argument I would suggest, but if we only look for the answers that are useful to us, do we make ourselves overly-reliant on those we’re making the case to? Don’t we have to strive for the moment William Burroughs called the naked lunch - 'a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork' – so we can start to move beyond it?
The final dot (never end on Burroughsian apocalyptic paranoia!) was catching up on the new series of The Thick of It, which is a lesson in the way political discourse has been perverted by language. It’s somehow missing something the first series and the specials had, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. (Maybe the loosened grip on power makes Malcolm something of an underdog, albeit one with horrible bark and bite?) It is still very funny though, especially if, like me, you think swearing can be grown up and funny.
Firstly a phrase echoing from the IFACCA Summit, Shelagh Wrights’s diagnosis that the arts suffer from ‘dodgy advocacy’, ran through my thinking – actually more worrying – about some themes from the IPPR/RSA event about the future of the public sector in the North East I mentioned last week. Themes like the need to acknowledge the unworkability of current ways before innovation kicks in.
Then that connected up to an essay I found via Matthew Taylor blogging about ‘policy-based evidence making’ with the rather wonderful title of ‘On bullshit in cultural policy practice and research’. In it, Dr Eleonora Belfiore uses research around evidence for ‘the impact of the arts’, as a case study in bullshit, that mode of discourse which puts persuasion above accuracy, what she describes as an ‘indifference to how things really are’. (Just for the record I think she’s right in general, but rather harsh on the arts, coming across at times as the kind of academic who’d be happier just having cultural policy and no actual messy culture.)
I then wondered if the current collective mindset of the publicly-funded arts and cultural sector is open and self-critical enough often enough to imagine all possible futures. (I include in that the funders involved, including government.) Have we become too accustomed to growth? Do we still believe that someone somewhere will have a pot of money they need to use at just the right moment –? For all our needs? What might we have to give up to respond to climate change? There is strong evidence for the impact of the arts, more than Belfiore can admit for her argument I would suggest, but if we only look for the answers that are useful to us, do we make ourselves overly-reliant on those we’re making the case to? Don’t we have to strive for the moment William Burroughs called the naked lunch - 'a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork' – so we can start to move beyond it?
The final dot (never end on Burroughsian apocalyptic paranoia!) was catching up on the new series of The Thick of It, which is a lesson in the way political discourse has been perverted by language. It’s somehow missing something the first series and the specials had, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. (Maybe the loosened grip on power makes Malcolm something of an underdog, albeit one with horrible bark and bite?) It is still very funny though, especially if, like me, you think swearing can be grown up and funny.
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
Bigmouth strikes again
Is there an arts strategy point to be drawn from the odd fact that I found myself on BBC Tees yesterday afternoon talking about the tv chef Keith Floyd who passed away yesterday? Let’s have a go, shall we…
(I should explain they asked me as I had an earlier career as a chef, and I’d been a guest on the breakfast show just last week, so must have been in someone’s head as the more obvious people didn’t answer their phones. At least I’m presuming the BBC don’t have a gigantic database of all our lives, though I gather that kind of thing is all the rage. I failed miserably to slip in a ‘Patrick Swayze died today too and we support some great dance through the Arts Council you know’ line, for which I apologise to the Communications team.)
The point I was able to dredge up in the five minutes notice I had was that Floyd, for all his foibles and failings, was an early part of a movement that moved cooking away from exam-style following of recipes to something freer without abandoning high standards, more expressive – what you might call the ‘fondle vegetables in foreign markets and whack it in the pan’ school. It also led to the current ubiquity of cooking on British television.
The arts point I might draw from this is that too much arts coverage on television is still too much like Delia Smith to really shift how people think about the arts. Tim Marlow has a robust zest and zing, and Mark Kermode is one of my favourite cultural commentators on screen and page. But both arguably enjoy sorting the wheat from the chaffe a little too much for popular taste, though there are few things more enjoyable than Kermode demolishing some nonsense.
In terms of promoting ‘participation’, the really great new tv figure is Gareth Malone, whose new programme, The Unsung Choir, follows the creation of a community choir on a ‘tough estate’. He is human, warm and uncompromising, and the programme is a great example of what a deep introduction to art can do for people and a community. You can see it here, and if you don’t find any of it moving I diagnose you as a cynic. (The BBC have also wrapped some useful info around the programme to encourage people to join choirs and sing.) We need more advocates and champions like this on our screens. And then maybe in 20 years Saturday morning telly will be given over to arts coverage rather than cooking.
(I should explain they asked me as I had an earlier career as a chef, and I’d been a guest on the breakfast show just last week, so must have been in someone’s head as the more obvious people didn’t answer their phones. At least I’m presuming the BBC don’t have a gigantic database of all our lives, though I gather that kind of thing is all the rage. I failed miserably to slip in a ‘Patrick Swayze died today too and we support some great dance through the Arts Council you know’ line, for which I apologise to the Communications team.)
The point I was able to dredge up in the five minutes notice I had was that Floyd, for all his foibles and failings, was an early part of a movement that moved cooking away from exam-style following of recipes to something freer without abandoning high standards, more expressive – what you might call the ‘fondle vegetables in foreign markets and whack it in the pan’ school. It also led to the current ubiquity of cooking on British television.
The arts point I might draw from this is that too much arts coverage on television is still too much like Delia Smith to really shift how people think about the arts. Tim Marlow has a robust zest and zing, and Mark Kermode is one of my favourite cultural commentators on screen and page. But both arguably enjoy sorting the wheat from the chaffe a little too much for popular taste, though there are few things more enjoyable than Kermode demolishing some nonsense.
In terms of promoting ‘participation’, the really great new tv figure is Gareth Malone, whose new programme, The Unsung Choir, follows the creation of a community choir on a ‘tough estate’. He is human, warm and uncompromising, and the programme is a great example of what a deep introduction to art can do for people and a community. You can see it here, and if you don’t find any of it moving I diagnose you as a cynic. (The BBC have also wrapped some useful info around the programme to encourage people to join choirs and sing.) We need more advocates and champions like this on our screens. And then maybe in 20 years Saturday morning telly will be given over to arts coverage rather than cooking.
Friday, 27 February 2009
The Week That Was
It’s been a funny old week. Last Saturday night I was at the North East Royal Television Society Awards do in Gateshead, with much angst about the future of regional production. Sunday culminated with a meal and a frankly-fantastic Hank Williams tribute band, the Lovesick Cowboys, at my local prize-winning vegetarian restaurant, The Waiting Room. Monday and Tuesday were pretty hard days getting ready and then presenting to my staff material proposals for the Arts Council’s restructure, which must save £6.5M by 2010. (I’m not going to go into all that here, that doesn’t feel right, visit the Arts Council website for a briefing, but obviously it’s been a backdrop to everything this week.) Wednesday I helped sort through applications to be on the Artists taking the Lead panel in the North East. Thursday afternoon I took part in a stimulating think-tank for the Creative Reading Charter (something Arts Council are doing with The Reading Agency and MLA). This was chaired by Sir Brian McMaster and was the first ever meeting in what will very soon be Newcastle’s amazing new City Library. Then I drove down to Middlesbrough for the opening of two fantastic shows at mima – ‘The End of the Line: attitudes in drawing’ and ‘Raising the Bar: Influential voices in metal’ (craft metal not Spinal Tap). Next I went over to The Georgian Theatre in Stockton to see my wife and daughter in the Diaspora Vocal Choir (a collection of immigrants to Stockton from all over the world under the direction of the marvellous Mike McGrother) as part of a celebration of a number of local community arts projects. (Then I went to play fiveaside but we’d be into the S of DCMS at that point so I’ll stop.)
And that’s just the things I can tell you about... (Well, I could tell you about management team meetings and how many emails I've read and sent, if you really want, but you know what I mean.)
The highlight of the week though, was Wednesday afternoon’s Samling Masterclass at the Sage Gateshead. Samling Foundation, run by the remarkable Karon Wright, provide training and development for emerging opera singers, called ‘Samling Scholars’. Six of them were in the middle of an intense week of masterclass work with a team led by Sir Thomas Allen, and submitted themselves to a public version – to a capacity audience in The Sage Gateshead’s Hall 2. At that point in the week, it was just what I needed. I’m far from an opera buff. But the fantastic music was moving and uplifting. What was even better was the way the masterclass format revealed the process of making really great art. A process rooted in dissatisfaction – never being satisfied with really good, but always looking for improvement. Seeing Sir Thomas Allen and colleagues lead the young singers through the piece and find deeper meaning and expression in text and melody and portrayal was brilliant, a vivid demonstration of artistic tradition and development. It also helped me understand the difference between good and excellence in opera singing, just a little, which was great. (Next someone can do likewise for free jazz perhaps?)
Clearly this was a powerful experience for the ‘scholars’. It’s intensive and expensive, and not a process supported by Arts Council funds at the moment, though we have supported some Samling projects previously, as well as rather reluctantly turning some down. (Karon takes the approach of inviting us whether we fund or not – in fact, I suspect she takes some kind of masochistic pleasure in ensuring I see how good their productions are without our support.) We can not support everything, nor should we, and there are other ways for young opera talent to develop we do support, but there's no denying the excellence of the art created. But I’m glad Samling continue to find support when and where needed.
So I was reminded, in a full and tricky week, about the nature of art, the power of art, and the challenge of art, all at once. (If this were a story I would of course have moved it from Wednesday to Friday afternoon for dramatic closure effect, but life is not art…)
The Week That Was, by the way, are a great band from Sunderland. Watch one of their videos here. It wasn't filmed in our office (that only makes sense if you watch it) though it does feature someone who used to work here. (Hi Laura.)
And that’s just the things I can tell you about... (Well, I could tell you about management team meetings and how many emails I've read and sent, if you really want, but you know what I mean.)
The highlight of the week though, was Wednesday afternoon’s Samling Masterclass at the Sage Gateshead. Samling Foundation, run by the remarkable Karon Wright, provide training and development for emerging opera singers, called ‘Samling Scholars’. Six of them were in the middle of an intense week of masterclass work with a team led by Sir Thomas Allen, and submitted themselves to a public version – to a capacity audience in The Sage Gateshead’s Hall 2. At that point in the week, it was just what I needed. I’m far from an opera buff. But the fantastic music was moving and uplifting. What was even better was the way the masterclass format revealed the process of making really great art. A process rooted in dissatisfaction – never being satisfied with really good, but always looking for improvement. Seeing Sir Thomas Allen and colleagues lead the young singers through the piece and find deeper meaning and expression in text and melody and portrayal was brilliant, a vivid demonstration of artistic tradition and development. It also helped me understand the difference between good and excellence in opera singing, just a little, which was great. (Next someone can do likewise for free jazz perhaps?)
Clearly this was a powerful experience for the ‘scholars’. It’s intensive and expensive, and not a process supported by Arts Council funds at the moment, though we have supported some Samling projects previously, as well as rather reluctantly turning some down. (Karon takes the approach of inviting us whether we fund or not – in fact, I suspect she takes some kind of masochistic pleasure in ensuring I see how good their productions are without our support.) We can not support everything, nor should we, and there are other ways for young opera talent to develop we do support, but there's no denying the excellence of the art created. But I’m glad Samling continue to find support when and where needed.
So I was reminded, in a full and tricky week, about the nature of art, the power of art, and the challenge of art, all at once. (If this were a story I would of course have moved it from Wednesday to Friday afternoon for dramatic closure effect, but life is not art…)
The Week That Was, by the way, are a great band from Sunderland. Watch one of their videos here. It wasn't filmed in our office (that only makes sense if you watch it) though it does feature someone who used to work here. (Hi Laura.)
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Can blue men sing the whites?
I’d been thinking about aesthetics and identity a lot since my last post. Then on Friday I saw a trio of fantastic performances by black musicians in the shape of Allen Toussaint, the Neville Brothers (time off injured last season has improved Gary’s keyboard playing no end, I swear, though he looked a bit different…), topped off by Abram Wilson’s fantastic jazz band reinventing New Orleans jazz whilst covering the Arctic Monkeys, Michael Jackson and James Brown and it felt very much ‘mine’ and very much ‘other’ at the same fun, exhilarating time. Then on Sunday night I watched the wedding reception episode of Gavin And Stacy series one. (Yeah, I know, late catching up – I’m always out at ‘art’, you know.) Which was one of the most pitch perfect bits of writing I’d seen in a long time, and very like the wedding reception I went to in Preston a couple of weeks ago.
So I thought I’d also throw out a Nick Hornby-style ‘Five things that Aren’t Saturday Night Sunday Morning but what is’ list, just for fun…
· The poetry of Jim Burns (a Preston poet to his bones despite moving to Cheshire some years ago, and being the world’s expert on the Beats). Start by looking at a few of his poems on the fantastic Poetry Magazines archive. http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/search/index.asp?search=Jim+Burns
· The work of the Side Gallery – treat yourself to a few minutes browsing their website.
· Control by Anton Corbijn – not the whole rock star suicide thing, obviously. But the depiction of bookish grammar school boys and life in Macclesfield has the tang of truth about it. (Looks great too.)
· David Eldridge’s Market Boy. This play definitely rang true from my (mercifully brief) time in London in the 80s, but had a joie de vivre and zest that made me think there is life beyond Northernness… (Would it be fair to call Eldridge Lee Hall’s Essex cousin?)
· The Royle Family can be a bit crude at times but I spent what I think of as literally years sitting on the sofa and brewing up like the Ralph Little character, though I was reading a book too. My mum even looked a bit like Sue Johnson, and although we would never have gone in for the belching, farting, banjo-playing thing, my granddad did have a neat Xmas party trick that involved whipping out his dentures…
Which makes me think that one man's box is another man's identity is another man's cliche, which would take me on to Peter Kay, so it's time to stop.
So I thought I’d also throw out a Nick Hornby-style ‘Five things that Aren’t Saturday Night Sunday Morning but what is’ list, just for fun…
· The poetry of Jim Burns (a Preston poet to his bones despite moving to Cheshire some years ago, and being the world’s expert on the Beats). Start by looking at a few of his poems on the fantastic Poetry Magazines archive. http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/search/index.asp?search=Jim+Burns
· The work of the Side Gallery – treat yourself to a few minutes browsing their website.
· Control by Anton Corbijn – not the whole rock star suicide thing, obviously. But the depiction of bookish grammar school boys and life in Macclesfield has the tang of truth about it. (Looks great too.)
· David Eldridge’s Market Boy. This play definitely rang true from my (mercifully brief) time in London in the 80s, but had a joie de vivre and zest that made me think there is life beyond Northernness… (Would it be fair to call Eldridge Lee Hall’s Essex cousin?)
· The Royle Family can be a bit crude at times but I spent what I think of as literally years sitting on the sofa and brewing up like the Ralph Little character, though I was reading a book too. My mum even looked a bit like Sue Johnson, and although we would never have gone in for the belching, farting, banjo-playing thing, my granddad did have a neat Xmas party trick that involved whipping out his dentures…
Which makes me think that one man's box is another man's identity is another man's cliche, which would take me on to Peter Kay, so it's time to stop.
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