A counter narrative to fundamentalism

In the aftermath of this dreadful  but somehow expected attack on the streets of Woolwich there has been some interesting and broad discussion about the need for a new ‘counter-narrative’.  I have heard and read the phrase repeatedly – a call to create something that speaks louder than the madness of fundamentalism.

It has left me wondering who will speak this new narrative?  The teachers who feel oppressed and oppositional to the Education Secretary? The arts and culture sector that has been urged to focus on its economic merits above all else?  The press – that is so mistrusted with regard to morality that it has to be investigated by parliament?  Television – with its seemingly endless prime time pumping out of karaoke and senseless shallow nonsense about celebrity? The High Street – struggling to find its feet and purpose against the warehouses of giant supermarkets and online delivery (which we see being addressed more sensibly and creatively by Dan Thompson @artistsmakers than by the depressing Mary Portas)?  

Who speaks the new narrative - McDonalds?

Some have stepped forward to say that this attack has been long-awaited, surprised that it has not happened before now.  What is it about 21^st century Britain with the constant barrage of the narrative of greed, intolerance and trivia that it seems not that surprising that  something like this might breed?  

The counter-narrative that is needed is the one of tolerance, fairness and culture.  Instead the daily news provides the ammunition for the hate fermenters, we see unfairness, bankers greed, debt and poverty, smart weapons used on illiterate people, the deaths of millions for the want of a few pence sandwiched between the latest stories of technological advances in apps for us.

The arts and culture sector should be the free mouth that speaks the narrative that can save us and in many places it is.  What better sector to reach the disaffected, who better to create new anthems and encourage creativity and the inner spirit that has no god’s axe to grind? 

From Danny Boyle’s expensive but hugely successful reminder of what this society has within it and where it came from, to the inclusive and personal work of artists and organisations working with the most disadvantaged – the failed, the prisoners, the future failers, the pre-rioters, the homeless, the kids, there are examples everywhere of why we should support the arts and what the arts does for us beyond economic terms.

There are so many examples of great public cultural works and festivals, performances, arts education and social projects, some that inspire and reach out to broad congregations, some that work and are directed at small, isolated and disadvantaged groups and individuals.

I read this week an ‘article’ from Conservative Home calling for all councils to cease funding the arts.  Conservative Home is an online blogging/news site for grassroots conservatives, it is owned by former Treasurer and Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, Lord Ashcroft, so should be taken seriously.  The article is all about promoting the free market approach to arts ie no subsidy, if the unsupported arts are any good they will survive, if not they will not have any market value and they will die.  Is this the new narrative that is needed?  The narrative that says a Big Mac and fries must be good because millions buy it?  

Is this the ‘counter-narrative’ that will breed tolerance and save young people from each other and save us all and make a better world?

The arts and culture sector does more than the money it costs to either the ticket or tax payer.  It inspires and provides an alternative to the intellect killing of the free market media with its lack of morality and flag waving boorishness.

The arts and culture sector must be both smart enough to understand itself and what its role is, and brave and articulate enough to speak up. 

We need three things: 

• increase not cut the public funding of the arts; 
• make the arts a statutory responsibility that local councils must support; 
• for artists and arts organizations to remind themselves of what our responsibility is and what we owe the public in return.

There is no doubt that there is a desperate need for a counter-narrative that speaks – one that offers an alternative to the chest beating fundamentalists and flag wavers and dog eat dog free marketers from wherever they come.  The art and culture sector speaks loudly, it is one of the things that archaeologists and historians use to measure societies past.  In our present we must use it and support it to express our best and most positive values and against that which is corrupt and most vile, from wherever it comes.

So stirred I made a blog dammit

This is our Culture Minister.  Recognise her?

http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/76991/maria_miller_speech_to_british_museum.html

A few weeks ago I received an email asking if I would like to go along to hear Maria Miller’s big speech on Culture at the British Museum (link above, have a butchers). I thought yes, but then again thought I might get myself into a ‘Chrissy in the Boys from the Blackstuff” situation (where he stands up at George’s funeral during the vicar’s eulogy and says “’…’scuse me vicar. But George wasn’t like that….”). It’s not some form of cultural speech Tourette’s that I have, it’s the compulsion to challenge stuff that doesn’t seem right – like Chrissy. So I didn’t go. 

I’ve seen one tweet since the speech saying “Maria Miller’s speech deserves closer study and thought than some knee-jerk reactions might suggest”. Apart from that all the others I have seen seem to be pretty non-hysterical and considered opinions. I do agree that the speech ‘deserves’ closer study, though to be picky I’d use the word ‘warrants’. 

Firstly I want to say…about bloody time. Not “about bloody time she spoke like this about culture”, I mean it’s about time she said something at all, maybe she has, maybe I missed it. 

Closer study of the speech leads me to want to comment on what is there, and what isn’t. The ‘commodity’ that is talked about in the speech is the art/culture that is most easily packaged as such. Sugar is a commodity, it comes in a package, we buy it. Ticketed events are perhaps able to be seen as a commodity, so the speech is filled with references to organisations that create ticketed events (though it is wrong to think of these as just as commodity, packets of sugar don’t make you cry - unless dropped from over three feet of course). 

The arts have been learning how to make the argument for their economic impact for some time, its been good to do so, but we must be careful that we don’t fall into the trap of this as being the only argument. If we do that then we will end up valuing art purely by using economic measures, organisations and artists will become like Mills and Boon – of course it’s a good book, it sold millions. There is an old t-shirt saying about eating shit and flies – eat shit, billions of flies do it: ergo must be good. 

What isn’t there in the speech is the encouragement to be imaginative, to innovate, to surprise, delight, shock, engage with our emotions, and most concerning of all there is no reference to participation. 

 Here you go, this is what we (the 'leaders' of the arts sector) are asked to do by the Culture Minister: 
“• to continue to build resilience and self-reliance; 
 • to seek out new artistic and commercial opportunities; 
 • to position yourself squarely within the visitor economy; 
 • and to look for international opportunities which will benefit Britain.” 
We know Maria, we know. But these can’t be all that we should do. 

Arts start with participation. Art is the first tool that we use to learn. We do this first of all through PARTICIPATION in the arts. Babies (US!!) learn language, they listen to stories, they are encouraged to draw and write, to make a mess with paint, draw mummy and daddy (mummy and mummy, daddy and daddy - hey...) and the house and the dog, to play creatively, to build ridiculous imaginary worlds and animals and fantastical beasts and buildings and towns out of linear blocks, their imagination is encouraged, and through our primary school years our imagination is encouraged so that we can perceive the world, its history, our culture, our place in it. 

As we grow older, the arts and imaginative creativity are removed from our curriculum, diminishing in importance, replaced with more ‘serious’ subjects that are more directed towards productivity and away from imagination for its own sake – hey you don’t have to be a Marxist to appreciate why this is so (and no, there is nothing wrong with learning how to work and be productive, it’s just when that is ALL that we are taught that it becomes drudgery and slavery). 

And yet we value those that hold onto that imagination – in our own culture most people around the world have heard of a visionary writer with a beard who wrote sometimes difficult language centuries ago, he is a thing of beauty, or at least his words are. His birthplace may be a commodity, his words are not; art is humanity, NOT just an economic commodity. A monkey with a typewriter could write Shakespeare? No. A human can, only a human. 

The IDENTITY of arts and culture is at the heart of all this – what we perceive them/it to be. 

Appropriation or singular focussing on it as an economic driver in order to justify investment in it is deeply, deeply (DEEPLY) worrying. If this is the primary justification for art then we are lost, and Maria Miller seems to be saying that this is the case, because of the ‘economic crisis’ she says (ie the crisis that has come about due to the devastating impact of the top 1% becoming ever richer, hoarding the world’s cash flow; play Monopoly, how much fun is it when one player owns all the stuff, has all of the money and the only relief is JAIL – yeah, yeah, it’s only a game, not like life at all). 

We should revel and celebrate in our great art, I do, I love it, I love the exceptional. However it is both hit and miss and most importantly of all it is subjective. It is utterly and universally important and ESSENTIAL that you may think that Gormley or Mozart or Harrison or Kane is not for you, or that you think my poetry or drawings or whatever could have been done by a five year old. 

Art is part of culture, culture is us - should WE be valued only on our economic worth?

Use our culture and art if you will to attract people to our country and our cafes and restaurants and to sell our cars (erm…ok not cars, we don’t do cars anymore), and even our philosophy, our way of life. That's ok.

But, and it is a FUNDEMENTAL but, DON'T demand/ask/hope that that is ALL that art and culture can do, because when you do I think of you as a slaver, as a Mammon serving mutton head, as an enemy of humanity, and I really don’t want to do that. Maria I will stand by you and defend your right to express yourself forever, I ask you to do the same for art and culture and to BELIEVE in it as the singular human difference. Maria, fight for that, please.

For those of us in the arts...let's stop dancing to this organ grinder's tune eh, she lists our economic impact in her speech! they know it, what they don't know is the true value of what we do; or maybe they do, and that's what they want rid of...

PS a wee addendum the day after...a couple of blogs that nail the 'economic' argument...http://honorharger.wordpress.com/author/honorharger/ and http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2013/apr/24/maria-miller-cultural-value-economic