Now, I'm not so dull witted that I cannot see the relevance of the US elections to us. Certainly, I'd be concerned if the British media decided that they weren't worth bothering with, but I am getting fed up with the fourth estate's treatment of them as if they were happening here and that they themselves are somehow a part of it.
The West Wing wet dream that is the presidential primaries is something that our most prominent journalists are losing all sense of perspective over, or indeed shame. There they are, mainly from Channel 4 News and BBC Newsnight, standing in the Iowa snow or some nameless midwest town, trying to be the equal of the oh-so exciting DC set they so desperately want to be a part of.
As Lionel Shriver has written, it's "embarrassing". So why do they bother?
Yes, it is important, and of course they are seduced by the romance of US politics, but there is something else. For the metropolitan media elite someone else's politics is, like the proles, always much more attractive than your own.
I can accept this prejudice - that's just life in the UK in the 2000s. It's the lack of embarrassment and self awareness that gets me. The US election coverage is making me cringe. When US networks only toss a cursory glance in the direction of our own polls, it's all a bit unseemly to be fawning over them in the very, very early stages of theirs. Like county cricket matches, I'm sure as hell interested in the final outcome, but I'm not sure I want to sit through the whole contest.
AND IN OTHER NEWS . . . Bristol lost. We're out of the Cup. Time to focus on the league.
Sunday, 20 January 2008
Monday, 14 January 2008
One last chance
Bristol lost to Stade Francais. It's an outside bet, but they've got one last chance to qualify by beating Cardiff at home on Sunday - and even then their progress isn't assured.
We'll see.
We'll see.
Sunday, 13 January 2008
The McMaster Report
So, Sir Brian McMaster's report Securing Excellence in the Arts has finally been published, and the intelligentsia have fallen over themselves to praise its "brilliance and boldness" (with a few notable exceptions).
I'm afraid I can't join in with the general peon. McMaster for me is a retrograde step that, if it actually informs public policy, could endanger access to the excellence he seeks to foster in Britain's cultural life.
For start, I think he, and most of the cultural elite, miss the point when they set up this false dichotomy between "excellence", and the hated "targets culture" of the last decade or so - where public subsidy goes hand in hand with a requirement to cultural institutions and artists to widen access or their appeal to particular groups and communities.
Who wouldn't be in favour of excellence? If the state is going to fund art and culture, then it should aspire to be funding the best, and raising the aspirations of the rest. But, at the same time, if galleries, museums, theatres and the rest of our cultural infrastructure is to exist at the behest of public subsidy, then it must contribute to the public good. The guardian of just what this should be is, like it or not, the government of the day. Excellence is about the quality of the product. Its end is that determined by its creator. Its funding should be about securing its positive impact for an audience and for the wellbeing of society.
I'm not sure anyone would argue with this, yet, we have got ourselves in a position where Sam West can speak for those, in line with McMaster, who say, "Art for Art’s sake is always more likely to produce good work than art that sets out to be useful or improving" as if the two are somehow in conflict.
Of course the values which are brought to judge art and culture should be aesthetic, but the values which are brought to determine where public money comes into fund the arts should rely on far more than a view of what is or isn't 'excellent'.
Government has a duty to secure the public good, and part of this, in any society which claims to be civilised, is access to the best art and culture possible for the greatest number. The reason for this is because, like it or not, Sam, art is "useful" and "improving".
This is not to enter the tired old debate about the intrinsic versus the instrumental (although, if art can promote mental health, that does seem a damn good reason to fund it to me). Even the "art for art's sake" brigade make the case for a flourishing cultural life in terms of its beneficial social (McMaster: "Excellent culture . . . gives us new insights and understandings of the world around us") and economic (West: "we must remind ourselves that the tourists who come to see those Shaftesbury Avenue shows make an enormous contribution to the national purse") impacts.
It is these impacts which DCMS have been trying for the best part of ten years to capture and to encourage the cultural sector to deliver. Of course, the rhetoric has gone too far, and needs redressing, but McMaster's emphasis on excellence and excellence alone as the aim of public policy and investment in culture is the other end of the spectrum - and could be just as damaging to the cultural life of the nation.
Matthew Taylor of the RSA is also concerned about the false dichotomy between views of culture's intrinsic and instrumental and makes the connected point that you have to have a system that allocates that the cash that as well as being effective is also democratic and responsible: "Public funding means public accountability: it is that simple."
McMaster wants excellence to be the only standard against which allocation decisions can be made. How do you ensure that this is the case? Well, he wants artists and cultural creators put in the driving seat. He wants funding bodies to make decisions based upon self assessment and peer review where the opinions of practitioners are dominant.
This would be all well and good if excellence were only one, rather than the primary basis for decision making, but it's not. Thus, you create the potential for cultural funding decisions that run counter to the public good, and thus threaten the legitimacy of arts subsidy. We've been here before - witness the 1990s controversy over lottery funding for the supposed elitist and aloof Royal Opera House. Putting artists in charge and making decisions on the basis of 'excellence' risks charges of elitism that could see a popular backlash against the whole system of funding for the arts.
How so? Well, much public funding for culture is about creating cultural opportunities where they don't exist or where particular groups are excluded (as measured by the hated diversity targets). By definition, this investment often is where there is a poor cultural infrastructure. Here, there can be no excellence. Investment fosters opportunity. Excellence may follow, but this may not necessarily be the case. If future investment decisions are made on the basis of excellence, then they may come into conflict with the public good. We may find ourselves funding institutions and artists that are indeed world class, but whose detachment from the society which funds them calls into question the legitimacy of their subsidy.
McMaster recognises this. He tells us that a commitment to excellence doesn't mean a decline in opportunity. "Excellent art", he tells us, "is by definition for, and relevant to, absolutely everyone." Well, quite.
The way to square this particularly difficult circle is, quite rightly, to ensure opportunity for access. Sadly, though, Sir Brian has spent so long thinking about excellence that his suggestions on how to improve access are threadbare. He is probably correct to identify a "not for me syndrome", but to fully understand this and frame solutions is a complex task best left to those with research capacity and a national remit for the public good like DCMS and the much maligned Arts Council. Trite solutions such as the week of free admission are mere gimmicks. Worst of all is the patronising suggestion that increased touring is the best way to bring the benefits of excellence to the poor benighted masses. This betrays McMaster's, and sadly James Purnell's, London-centric view of the cultural sector.
This arises because McMaster hasn't spent very much time looking at how people in this country actually access culture. Perhaps he had a flawed brief, but he's only really interested in what happens when they engage with big nationally funded activities and institutions, and arts ones at that (the report's occasional references to museums read as an ill-thought out add on to keep someone somewhere happy - but they don't really work). Of course people visit galleries and go to the theatre, but they also go to the library. They might never visit a national museum in London, but they might well go to their local museum or a National Trust property. McMaster is hot on how cultural practitioners need to engage internationally so that they can be world class, but beyond the gimmicks he's got nothing to say about how the rest of the country can join the party. Cultural life is indigenous to the communities that foster, create and consume it. How best to support this is as much a concern of government as the future excellence and international standing of our world class institutions.
It's sad that he focuses on the gimmicks when there is so much interesting stuff going on at the moment to explore how communities can have improved access to cultural opportunities. The thing is, though, it's not about excellence. It's about filling gaps in provision, raising aspirations, and beginning from the needs of communities.
Which is where I want to end this rather long rant. We fund the arts because they are valuable to our society, and we should fund particular projects, insitutions and practitioners because they are helping to improve the lives of individuals and communities. Of course we want our arts and culture to be excellent, but making excellence the touchstone of cultural policy and subsidy has big risks. It perpetuates the fallacy that the intrinsic value of art is always up against the instrumental. Fundamentally, though, it means that an aesthetic judgement on art will determine where the money goes, not assessments made on the basis of the public good.
McMaster could have written a very good report on how publicly funded art can be excellent. Instead, he has allowed excellence to become a totem obscuring all other values that should guide decisions on public subsidy. This will make for bad public policy, threatening access to cultural opportunity and limiting the benefit that art brings to our communities. It could even threaten the legitimacy of public subsidy for culture itself.
I'm afraid I can't join in with the general peon. McMaster for me is a retrograde step that, if it actually informs public policy, could endanger access to the excellence he seeks to foster in Britain's cultural life.
For start, I think he, and most of the cultural elite, miss the point when they set up this false dichotomy between "excellence", and the hated "targets culture" of the last decade or so - where public subsidy goes hand in hand with a requirement to cultural institutions and artists to widen access or their appeal to particular groups and communities.
Who wouldn't be in favour of excellence? If the state is going to fund art and culture, then it should aspire to be funding the best, and raising the aspirations of the rest. But, at the same time, if galleries, museums, theatres and the rest of our cultural infrastructure is to exist at the behest of public subsidy, then it must contribute to the public good. The guardian of just what this should be is, like it or not, the government of the day. Excellence is about the quality of the product. Its end is that determined by its creator. Its funding should be about securing its positive impact for an audience and for the wellbeing of society.
I'm not sure anyone would argue with this, yet, we have got ourselves in a position where Sam West can speak for those, in line with McMaster, who say, "Art for Art’s sake is always more likely to produce good work than art that sets out to be useful or improving" as if the two are somehow in conflict.
Of course the values which are brought to judge art and culture should be aesthetic, but the values which are brought to determine where public money comes into fund the arts should rely on far more than a view of what is or isn't 'excellent'.
Government has a duty to secure the public good, and part of this, in any society which claims to be civilised, is access to the best art and culture possible for the greatest number. The reason for this is because, like it or not, Sam, art is "useful" and "improving".
This is not to enter the tired old debate about the intrinsic versus the instrumental (although, if art can promote mental health, that does seem a damn good reason to fund it to me). Even the "art for art's sake" brigade make the case for a flourishing cultural life in terms of its beneficial social (McMaster: "Excellent culture . . . gives us new insights and understandings of the world around us") and economic (West: "we must remind ourselves that the tourists who come to see those Shaftesbury Avenue shows make an enormous contribution to the national purse") impacts.
It is these impacts which DCMS have been trying for the best part of ten years to capture and to encourage the cultural sector to deliver. Of course, the rhetoric has gone too far, and needs redressing, but McMaster's emphasis on excellence and excellence alone as the aim of public policy and investment in culture is the other end of the spectrum - and could be just as damaging to the cultural life of the nation.
Matthew Taylor of the RSA is also concerned about the false dichotomy between views of culture's intrinsic and instrumental and makes the connected point that you have to have a system that allocates that the cash that as well as being effective is also democratic and responsible: "Public funding means public accountability: it is that simple."
McMaster wants excellence to be the only standard against which allocation decisions can be made. How do you ensure that this is the case? Well, he wants artists and cultural creators put in the driving seat. He wants funding bodies to make decisions based upon self assessment and peer review where the opinions of practitioners are dominant.
This would be all well and good if excellence were only one, rather than the primary basis for decision making, but it's not. Thus, you create the potential for cultural funding decisions that run counter to the public good, and thus threaten the legitimacy of arts subsidy. We've been here before - witness the 1990s controversy over lottery funding for the supposed elitist and aloof Royal Opera House. Putting artists in charge and making decisions on the basis of 'excellence' risks charges of elitism that could see a popular backlash against the whole system of funding for the arts.
How so? Well, much public funding for culture is about creating cultural opportunities where they don't exist or where particular groups are excluded (as measured by the hated diversity targets). By definition, this investment often is where there is a poor cultural infrastructure. Here, there can be no excellence. Investment fosters opportunity. Excellence may follow, but this may not necessarily be the case. If future investment decisions are made on the basis of excellence, then they may come into conflict with the public good. We may find ourselves funding institutions and artists that are indeed world class, but whose detachment from the society which funds them calls into question the legitimacy of their subsidy.
McMaster recognises this. He tells us that a commitment to excellence doesn't mean a decline in opportunity. "Excellent art", he tells us, "is by definition for, and relevant to, absolutely everyone." Well, quite.
The way to square this particularly difficult circle is, quite rightly, to ensure opportunity for access. Sadly, though, Sir Brian has spent so long thinking about excellence that his suggestions on how to improve access are threadbare. He is probably correct to identify a "not for me syndrome", but to fully understand this and frame solutions is a complex task best left to those with research capacity and a national remit for the public good like DCMS and the much maligned Arts Council. Trite solutions such as the week of free admission are mere gimmicks. Worst of all is the patronising suggestion that increased touring is the best way to bring the benefits of excellence to the poor benighted masses. This betrays McMaster's, and sadly James Purnell's, London-centric view of the cultural sector.
This arises because McMaster hasn't spent very much time looking at how people in this country actually access culture. Perhaps he had a flawed brief, but he's only really interested in what happens when they engage with big nationally funded activities and institutions, and arts ones at that (the report's occasional references to museums read as an ill-thought out add on to keep someone somewhere happy - but they don't really work). Of course people visit galleries and go to the theatre, but they also go to the library. They might never visit a national museum in London, but they might well go to their local museum or a National Trust property. McMaster is hot on how cultural practitioners need to engage internationally so that they can be world class, but beyond the gimmicks he's got nothing to say about how the rest of the country can join the party. Cultural life is indigenous to the communities that foster, create and consume it. How best to support this is as much a concern of government as the future excellence and international standing of our world class institutions.
It's sad that he focuses on the gimmicks when there is so much interesting stuff going on at the moment to explore how communities can have improved access to cultural opportunities. The thing is, though, it's not about excellence. It's about filling gaps in provision, raising aspirations, and beginning from the needs of communities.
Which is where I want to end this rather long rant. We fund the arts because they are valuable to our society, and we should fund particular projects, insitutions and practitioners because they are helping to improve the lives of individuals and communities. Of course we want our arts and culture to be excellent, but making excellence the touchstone of cultural policy and subsidy has big risks. It perpetuates the fallacy that the intrinsic value of art is always up against the instrumental. Fundamentally, though, it means that an aesthetic judgement on art will determine where the money goes, not assessments made on the basis of the public good.
McMaster could have written a very good report on how publicly funded art can be excellent. Instead, he has allowed excellence to become a totem obscuring all other values that should guide decisions on public subsidy. This will make for bad public policy, threatening access to cultural opportunity and limiting the benefit that art brings to our communities. It could even threaten the legitimacy of public subsidy for culture itself.
Friday, 11 January 2008
Allez les bleus
This evening in Paris, Bristol take on French mega club Stade Francais in the Heineken Cup. Here's what happened when the two sides met back in November.
Can we triumph again? It seems unlikely. Stade will have been waiting for this chance to put Bristol back in their place, and their home record commands respect.
Nevertheless, I will make my way to the pub with a couple of other exiles to see what transpires. In sport anything is possible - and we are Bris, after all.
Can we triumph again? It seems unlikely. Stade will have been waiting for this chance to put Bristol back in their place, and their home record commands respect.
Nevertheless, I will make my way to the pub with a couple of other exiles to see what transpires. In sport anything is possible - and we are Bris, after all.
Sunday, 6 January 2008
A win's a win
Despite the fact that Bristol have only lost two of their last seven matches, the Memorial Ground faithful have been working themselves up into a state of panic. OK, so the two defeats were against local rivals Gloucester and Bath, and no one likes losing the derbies, but a sense of perspective is always required. Director Nigel Pomphrey's ill judged comments didn't help.
Today brings a league win over Saracens. Bristol aren't going to set any domestic competition alight this season, but they are in much more robust shape - on and off the pitch - than some would have us believe.
Today brings a league win over Saracens. Bristol aren't going to set any domestic competition alight this season, but they are in much more robust shape - on and off the pitch - than some would have us believe.
Friday, 4 January 2008
Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery
Despite having lived here for five years, I had never visited the cemetery that is five minutes walk from our front door. Just before Christmas, I took our baby, T, out for his morning walk on a very foggy day. Instead of heading up Hilly Fields as per usual, I went to Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery.
It was incredible. The mist hid all of the surrounding houses and it felt as if T and I were in some wood far from anywhere with gravestones providing the undergrowth.
As a resource for local wildlife, the value of the cemetery is obvious. But are the community appreciative of what is on their doorstep? There were few people there when we visited, nor on subsequent trips but local interest there obviously is. The question is, I suppose, what is the benefit that it brings and how to best secure that?
The renewal of Ladywell Fields shows that the Council is investing in our open spaces, but the purpose of a park is a lot more obvious than a largely disused cemetery. Of course, it is important to the local environment, but its value goes beyond that. It tells the story of this area for a period of its history, and that is an essential underpinning to any sense of identity for a place.
However, given the changing population of this place, and the declining numbers visiting the graves of their loved ones, Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery is increasingly cut off from the life of the community around it as much as it was from sight by the fog on the day of my visit.
I hope that the various community activists focusing their attention upon it are successful in their ambition, and I hope they, and the council, sensitively manage the tension between the cultural and the environmental value of the cemetery.
Thursday, 3 January 2008
A manifesto, of sorts
"My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see."
This is emphatically not what I am about. That takes prodigious talent - or prodigious conceit.
Masking a paucity of originality with literary quotes is exactly the kind of pretension I want to avoid. Asserting that I alone I know needs to be known, and that you need to know it is not what I want to do. Far from it.
I have a standpoint, and a place from which I view things. I want to record what I think, and, if I have anything of value to say, perhaps be allowed to participate in debate.
Why now? Well, the technology lets me, but also because I am at a new stage in my life. My baby son is weeks old and is changing me and how I see the world. It will be interesting to chart this journey.
So, what is my standpoint? I wouldn't for a moment claim that I'm unique, but in me I am aware of some interesting tensions and perhaps insights. As any good materalist will tell you they come from who I am. Since leaving university I have worked in the public sector during some very interesting times. As a student, I studied history and English literature. A rewarding, and ultimately academically successful time in my life. I am a member of the Labour Party. I was born in Bristol, and raised in the West Country, to which friends will tell you that I have an unusually strong attachment, despite having spent the last decade living in London, now in Lewisham.
Hence, non-provincial lives, an echo of Flaubert (whoops, I've already broken my golden rule against literary pretension), as I survey a largely metropolitan vista from a vantage point built upon provincial and lower middle class foundations. Whether the labels are relevant or even ridiculous is for another day. I've explained the name, and that was my intent.
Beyond that, I'm not going to say who I am. If you know me, you will have already guessed - but keep it to yourself.
What I am going to write about will probably end up a moveable feast. Be certain, though, that this blog, if not any reader, will be blessed by my thoughts on politics, culture, the places I know, with an occasional foray into sport.
Part of my motivation is that I want to write differently and to write better. This is my chance to find my own style. I am looking forward to seeing if I can achieve this.
Will anyone will care enough to be its witness? Well, this remains to be seen.
This is emphatically not what I am about. That takes prodigious talent - or prodigious conceit.
Masking a paucity of originality with literary quotes is exactly the kind of pretension I want to avoid. Asserting that I alone I know needs to be known, and that you need to know it is not what I want to do. Far from it.
I have a standpoint, and a place from which I view things. I want to record what I think, and, if I have anything of value to say, perhaps be allowed to participate in debate.
Why now? Well, the technology lets me, but also because I am at a new stage in my life. My baby son is weeks old and is changing me and how I see the world. It will be interesting to chart this journey.
So, what is my standpoint? I wouldn't for a moment claim that I'm unique, but in me I am aware of some interesting tensions and perhaps insights. As any good materalist will tell you they come from who I am. Since leaving university I have worked in the public sector during some very interesting times. As a student, I studied history and English literature. A rewarding, and ultimately academically successful time in my life. I am a member of the Labour Party. I was born in Bristol, and raised in the West Country, to which friends will tell you that I have an unusually strong attachment, despite having spent the last decade living in London, now in Lewisham.
Hence, non-provincial lives, an echo of Flaubert (whoops, I've already broken my golden rule against literary pretension), as I survey a largely metropolitan vista from a vantage point built upon provincial and lower middle class foundations. Whether the labels are relevant or even ridiculous is for another day. I've explained the name, and that was my intent.
Beyond that, I'm not going to say who I am. If you know me, you will have already guessed - but keep it to yourself.
What I am going to write about will probably end up a moveable feast. Be certain, though, that this blog, if not any reader, will be blessed by my thoughts on politics, culture, the places I know, with an occasional foray into sport.
Part of my motivation is that I want to write differently and to write better. This is my chance to find my own style. I am looking forward to seeing if I can achieve this.
Will anyone will care enough to be its witness? Well, this remains to be seen.
Wednesday, 2 January 2008
Beginnings
If I was being honest with you, I'd have to say that I have a clear idea about what I want this blog to be, but there is not much clarity over what the content will actually be. Watch, as they say, this space.
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