Category Archives: Arts, Culture And Heritage
New Year Resolutions For You And Your Lifestyle
Everyone takes time as the New Year arrives to do some mental spring cleaning. This list offers ideas for reflection and perhaps as New Year Resolutions. It’s about how individuals approach their lives and leisure time. I hope it’s useful.
Here’s an alphabet of resolutions and reflections for the New Year. It’s a mix, match or amend menu, so take it where you will. Good Luck!
A Join an Athletics Club, learn Archery, visit an Art Gallery – Anything new. You choose; but just see if you can get a different Angle on life.
B Look on the Bright side wherever you can; remember to make time to Bond with family, friends, neighbours, colleagues…
C Concentrate your mind on something different. Find a Community Choir, go to a ‘proper, sit and listen’ Concert, be a member of a Chess Club (on-line if you like), play Croquet, whatever.
D Is there enough Drama in your life? Find ways to chill if there’s too much. Develop a tast for exciting sports events, politics or live theatre / opera if there’s not enough.
E Increase your Energy: Exercise! Every day.
F Grow your own Food and Flowers sometimes, even if only in window boxes – ‘green’ is good for you in many ways.
G How’s your Girth? If you’re not pleased with your measurements, Get it sorted. Gently.
H Try to stay Happy; think back, every evening, to what’s gone right that day.
I Take In a panto / ballet and let your Imagination run wild; or learn to play a musical Instrument – In a group or with the kids…
J Do a personal Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis of your Job or other main activity. What does it tell you?
K Perform a random act of Kindness, every day; something you really didn’t have to do, but which makes someone else smile (you’ll smile too).
L Learn about your carbon footprint. And Learn to Listen.
M Make a wish, a promise to yourself which Means something to you as a person. How will you Manage to achieve it?
N Avoid Negatives; don’t be cynical. Life’s too short.
O Organise a visit to somewhere you’ve always dreamed of going; just do it.
P Buy a Pedometer and wear it. When last did you Pound the Pavements or simply stroll in your local Park?
Q We all need Quality time.
R Find time too for Reflection. Life is not a Rehearsal.
S Sort a Same Sex night out – Somewhere you can hear each other Speak.
T Have a TV-free day every week. Go on, give it a Try!
U Understand other people’s perspectives where you can.
V Could you go Vegetarian? It’s eco-friendly and it costs less.
W Sustain and enjoy Wildlife – even if it’s only the ‘diners’ fluttering around your Window Bird Feeder
X EXplore somewhere new, however locally or far-flung. Search and marvel on the internet if you can’t physically get there.
Y Stay Young at heart ( but appreciate the advantages of experience). So….
Z Take the kids (yours / some hard-pressed mum’s..) to, say, the Zoo; join in gladly as they have fun!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
So You Want To Put On A Show?
Shows are far more complicated to produce than many in the audience will ever realise. Here’s a lighthearted ‘poetic’ guide for anyone who fancies chancing their hand as promoter or director of a musical or theatrical event. Hopefully, everything you need to think about is here…
So you want to put on a show?
Well, here are the things you must know:
What’s the date, when’s the time, where’s the money?
What’s the theme, is it straight, sad or funny?
Who can act, who can play, who can sing?
Who’ll direct, can they do the whole thing?
What’s the venue, location and cost?
If the tickets don’t sell, are you lost?
Who’ll do your box office, and how?
Do you need to start marketing now?
Who’ll design programmes, posters and flyers?
Will you cope if a team member tires?
Have you found all your quotes for the print-run
And settled dates for it to be done?
Who’ll design any costumes and sets?
Are you confident budgets are met?
Have you found all your scripts and / or scores?
Are there copies for all, and some more?
Have you sorted rehearsals and places
So performers can go through their paces?
Will you use a presenter, and who?
If you have to cut back, will that do?
Will your artists require expenses,
Are these likely to be quite extensive?
Have you registered with Performing Rights
(Or composers could give you sleepless nights)?
Do you know that your players need cuppas
And without these they’ll end on their uppers?
Are you certain your insurance’s updated
Just in case your poor venture is fated?
Have you checked your venue is licenced
To avoid legal questions or sentence?
Are your sponsors signed up and contented?
Have you made sure no egos are dented?
Can you say hand on heart
That you’ll still play the part
When frustrations or worries are vented?
Have you thought if your venue needs heating?
Have you sorted there’s adequate seating?
Have you sound-checked against any din?
Is your access well-lit coming in?
Are your backdrops and props fine and dandy?
Your producer not reaching for brandy?
Are the stage lights and spots in good order?
Can the musos all see their own folders?
Is the piano in tune?
Has the stage enough room?
Have you ordered the squash, wine and biccies?
Can you wash your hands clean if they’re sticky?
Do performers have costumes which fit them?
And a place where they change to get in them?
Come the day when the show’s set to go
Who will do all the tapes and photos?
Will there be a recording on the night?
(And what about the media rights?)
Have you vendors for tickets and nibbles?
And some stewards to sort out the quibbles?
Have you marked out seats on the front row
Where your V.I.P. guests will all go?
Will a few words be said when the show starts
By a ‘vip’ with sound wisdom to impart?
Are there flowers gift-wrapped with a bow
To present at the end of the show?
Are your thank-yous all done to be posted,
So your artists and hosts feel toasted?
Will the audience know
When it’s over, to go
With a smile and a song in their hearts?
Oh! You’ve had quite enough
And you think it’s too tough
And you wish that you never had started.
But the show must go on
And there’s no escape from
The idea which began so stout-hearted.
Then the audience arrives
And the tails and bow ties
Are put on by your doughty performers;
And they go on the stage
And the show is a rage
(So you hope in your dreams,
If the critic thus deems)
And the buzz when it ends is high order.
But there’s just one more task
As you sort out the costs –
Fingers crossed, not a loss? –
And the hall’s cleared at last
As the costumes and music are stowed.
Now the hassles are over,
And though you are sober
You feel as if you’re quite heady.
And somehow a notion
Sets itself into motion
For another performance or show……
Are you c e r t a i n you’re r e a d y ???
© HB/Nov.04
A Bach Christmas For Us All!
The BBC Radio 3 Bach experience has been an extraordinary experiment; but sharing something like this with people all over the world as Christmas approaches surely has a particular meaning for many.
Anyone who enjoys classical music will be aware that the BBC has just offered us ten days of uninterrupted Bach. This has to be the tour de force to beat ’em all.
I’d be less than candid if I didn’t admit there have been times when I decided enough was enough – and turned to Dinah Washington, the Walker Brothers or other entirely ‘off site’ artists for a bit of contrast… or when I chose instead to listen to my usual fare of the wonderful chamber music of the past two centuries.
Nonetheless, in this season of good cheer, perhaps it’s worth just thinking how amazing it is that the BBC can arrange for us to listen to all, everything, J.S. Bach has left us, from three hundred or so years ago.
A global legacy shared
My guess is that people all over the world have been ‘tuning in’ on their broadband computers and hearing Bach in the morning, Bach at lunchtime and Bach in the evening [postscript, 27 Dec: 2.5 million hits were recorded!].
Maybe Bach is not everyone’s cup of tea, but here we have something really quite extraordinary – a community of ‘People on Earth’ who, without knowing each other, are sharing a legacy of three hundred years which has been the basis for much of our contemporary music, popular, ‘classical’ and even cutting edge.
Just as we can share the hoped-for goodwill of Christmas without necessarily the religious aspects, so through music and very ‘new’ technologies we can share a heritage which means something, whatever our own contemporary musical preferences.
Christmas Round Robin Letters Round Off The Year
Christmas round robin letters evoke strong views; but they’re an excellent way to keep in touch, even if they often do ‘accentuate the positive’. We’re no longer in communities where we can just pop down the road to share our news.
Should one, or should one not, enclose with one’s festive greetings a newsletter-cum-salutation which brings the recipient up to speed on at least the more positive of one’s experiences over the past twelve months?
‘Round robins’, it is said, are so named because originally they were delivered in Victorian times by postmen wearing red uniforms, a cheery thought for this festive season. Which brings me to the crux of the matter. To round robin or not to round robin? Is it good form to put an annual ‘family newsletter’ addressed to ‘Dear All’ in with the Christmas card?
Keeping in touch
Here’s a question to which there is absolutely not a ‘right’ answer. The pro- and anti- camps are, each of them, both persuasive and unpersuadable.
It’s a question on which both ‘sides’ claim the high moral ground, and a situation in which faux pas is often the order of the day.
But for my money, the answer is Yes, please do send a newsy note with your Christmas card if you (a) can, and (b) would like to ….. providing always that what you are about to relate is mostly pleasant and / or necessary news, and that it will read as sharing rather than blaring.
And I will try to reciprocate in similar manner.
Change of context, change of comms.
Life for most people in the Western world has changed a great deal in the past several decades.
Almost no-one from my youth still lives where they grew up; in fact, few of them even live anywhere near where they studied or started their professional lives. And to this we can add likewise that few of our children now live anywhere near us.
In other words, for large numbers of people their ‘communities’ are many and varied. There are our initial reference points – family and school days; then there are college and early career friends; then we add in-laws or similar; and then our careers often take us in very different directions from those which we may have expected… and so it goes on.
Obviously, not everyone experiences such steadily shifting contextual arrangements, but for an ever-larger proportion of the population such, up to the present, has been life as we know it.
Hardly surprising then that for many of us the Christmas card list continues to grow, and the possibility of individual meaningful and handwritten seasonal letters becomes less and less feasible, despite our very good intentions. We’d have to start the Christmas cards in October, to achieve anything like a respectable output on a fully ‘individualised’ basis.
It’s the intention that counts
So I for one like to receive the annual round robin messages and notes which come through my letterbox during the festive season. We read and share them with others. It’s become a part of the Christmas ritual.
Newsletters make the saluations in the Christmas cards meaningful; these are not greetings from shadowy figures from my past, but from real people in the here-and-now.
The news and views I read from past colleagues and old friends are ever-interesting. The diaspora underpinning our modern lives continues to expand, but the community of interest and shared experience remains.
Shared meaning writ large
Another sense in which we use the term ’round robin’ is to describe the making of a patchwork quilt, sometimes by a number of friends and family together and often as a part of the tradition of American community life. (Though now there are even internet quilting groups!)
Like this simple shared craft activity, round robin letters are not meaningless. Enjoy, joke or even grimace if you must, but also please know that for most of those who write round robins they are a genuine attempt to show that you have not been forgotten. The spirit of Christmas letters reflects the basic commonality of meaning from which we have all emerged to go our separate and fascinating ways.
The Tale of the Christmas Laser Lights: Spotlight on Delivery
Big celebratory events are always at risk of failing to fulfil their hyped-up promise. London experienced this so it is said when they tried one year to introduce laser lights for the Oxford Street Christmas illuminations. How much more embarrassing it would be if Liverpool were not to deliver fully on the promise for the celebrations in 2007 and 2008.
Twice in the past fortnight I’ve been in London, a city currently sporting serious Christmas illuminations, and both times I’ve heard from cab drivers the Tale of the Christmas Laser Lights.
The story goes that one year London’s Oxford Street Christmas lights (normally, as this year, fairly predictable arrangements) were redesigned to include lasers. This caused considerable excitement, to all accounts across the globe, and visitors travelled from far and wide to see these splendid displays. The problem, as related by my cab drivers, was however that splendid the lasers were not.
Promise only what you can deliver
Thus, in one case, my taxi driver told me that he had actually attempted to talk a potential visitor out of an expensive ride to see the lasers; but to no avail. His fare’s disappointment was huge, having as it then transpired travelled from abroad to see them, when it became evident to the visitor that these high-tech features of the Christmas illuminations were almost undetectable.
And there’s surely a moral here. If you’re going to talk something up, make sure you can actually deliver it. The story of the Christmas laser lights has clearly become a part of the folk lore of London tourism. It’s evolved, rightly or wrongly, into a benchmark for How Not To Do It.
The lesson for Liverpool
In the next two or three years Liverpool is lined up to deliver enormous celebratory events, firstly, in 2007, for the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the city, and then, in 2008, for the European Capital of Culture Year.
As things stand, few of us are privy to any substantive information about what will happen in Liverpool during these two years (and even fewer of us have been involved in making proposals). All, however, are regaled on a daily basis with tales of how splendidly impressive these signal events will be.
Let’s not forget the moral of the story of the Christmas Laser Lights. A visitior disappointed is a visitor who will very likely remember for many a year to come the time and resources s/he ill-advisedly invested.
Redeeming a nondescript set of annual Christmas illuminations is one thing. Redeeming two very special and critically high profile, but ultimately nondescript, years in a world-renown city such as Liverpool would be on a different scale of significance altogether.
Christmas Activities For Children And Families
No-one has the perfect answer to the question, ‘What shall we do with (or as) the kids over Christmas?’ But here are some day-by-day suggestions for the family during the Christmas / Winter Solstice week, with an indoor, an outdoor and a foodie activity for each date. Mix and match, with something for everyone, is the general approach. And, whatever you do, have fun.
The Merseyside Entrepreneurship Commission
The launch of the final Report of the Merseyside Entrepreneurship Commission this morning has thrown up some interesting facts, some challenging ideas and a number of practical ‘can do’s’. The big question now is, where do we go next?
This morning I went to the launch of the Merseyside Entrepreneurship Commission‘s final Report. It was a well attended meeting; and I gather there are to be events throughout the week to exemplify the core messge, that enterprise is doing, not talking about it.
Is Merseyside different?
It would I think be difficult to claim that Merseyside is really different from other similar areas of Britain in terms of the need to bring the entrepreneurial message into focus. But it may be that the particular context of European Objective 1 funding makes the situation a little more striking. It’s not unusual for areas such as this to have about 60% dependency in one way or another on public funding, but perhaps the huge plethora of agencies purporting to offer ‘advice’ is fuelled by the availability of this funding stream.
Whatever, I have to agree wholeheartedly that there are too many agencies, and that they are insufficiently monitored in respect of the quality of what they have on offer. I do wonder, however, what impact there might be on Merseyside’s economy if the 300 or so agencies were ‘rationalised’ in the way some might wish. Would there be a local mini-recession? And would this kick-start or stifle further developments?
Emphasis on technology
It’s also interesting that one proposal for the way forward is to have a web forum. As I was one of, no doubt, many who suggested the web ‘ideas exchange’, I am pleased to see that this notion has now taken on a life of its own.
The web forum has been entitled ‘ucan’ (make it) and is intended to be a virtual reference point for all things entrepreneurial in Merseyside. Hopefully, it will be a means by which those other, non-e agencies can streamline and provide a joined up service for budding entrepreneurs, as well as for established followers of the mode who want to exchange news, views and so on. Perhaps it will also be able to support the educational initiatives which the Commission obviously wants to see extended and nurtured.
Where now?
The Merseyside Entrepreneurship Commission told us this morning that it has now completed its formal work. It will be interesting – if not fascinating – to see what happens next. The website is to be sponsored for six months to see how much it is used and how it develops; and the challenge is firmly presented to the many agencies and other operators to get themsleves aligned in terms of the clients’ wider experience and access.
We shall all, I suspect, watch this space with interest.
Whose Liverpool Capital of Culture Year?
Is ‘high culture’ in reality only for ‘tourists’ in a city like Liverpool? Have civic leaders confused seeking excellence with its occasional and much less desirable adjunct, exculsivity? If the city is serious about opportunities to support the personal development of its citizens and the economic health of its communities, ‘high’ arts and culture surely have to integral to the experience of the many, not just of the few.
Liverpool City Council’s new Leader, Councillor Warren Bradley, has already given his opinion on the city’s current plans for the European Capital of Culture in 2008.
‘I want to raise the profile of Capital of Culture because many people feel it is not for them’, he says. ‘We will need high art for the city centre for tourists, but it must hold the hand of community art.’
Social inclusion
Well, what does this mean? Warren Bradley was before his elevation Executive Member for Culture in the city, so it’s good to see, if I’m reading him correctly, that he intends to bring the Capital of Culture programme to as many people in Liverpool as possible.
It’s quite true that not everyone in Liverpool will willingly pay to sit through a long performance of a play, concert or perhaps opera; and in that of course Liverpool is no different from any other city anywhere.
Community politics
But is it true that as things stand (almost?) no-one in the city would or does enjoy ‘high art’? I don’t think so. This has a feeling, albeit perhaps unintentional, of playing to the gallery.
It’s a strange world where it’s suggested that only ‘tourists’, presumably from elsewhere since that what tourists generally are, will appreciate or want to see ‘high art’. There significant numbers of people who live in Liverpool and Merseyside who enjoy and support ‘high art’ already – we have three universities, two famous cathedrals, well-known theatres, a very significant collection of museums and galleries, and a world-renown orchestra. And these instituitions were integral to the winning bid to take on the mantle of 2008 European Capital of Culture. So why are they by implication now perhaps for ‘tourists’?
Leadership in challenging cultural barriers
I’d like to see two things happen fairly quickly as far as Liverpool’s ‘high arts’ assets are concerned.
Firstly, it needs to be acknowledged absolutely without question that nearly everyone involved in ‘high art’ in this city strives very hard indeed to make what they have on offer more ‘accessible’; and even those who aren’t actively involved in this mission fully accept its imperative. And the same will apply to those additional visiting ‘high’ artists who come to Liverpool during 2008. So there is already a huge will to challenge the barrier which may be keeping some Liverpool people away from the excellent range of high art in their own city. ‘Community’ art in Liverpool is already a central plank in the ‘high art’ cultural offer.
Secondly, I believe very strongly that people should be helped to understand the role of high art in their communities. It can and should serve them directly, but it is also a significant factor in attracting and / or maintaining other highly skilled people within the local economy. Professional and many business people expect to be able to attend quality performances in their own city, they expect to be able to take potential investors and customers to good plays, opera, concerts and whatever. These high art commodities are not fluffy add-ons, they are essential to the developing local and regional economy. And they need to be presented in this light by our city leaders.
Cultural entitlement
But there’s also another thing we all need to keep in mind….. Like many other things which are worth doing, ‘high art’ takes a bit of effort and getting used to. Moving outside previous experience and comfort zones is not always an easy option, but that’s absolutely not a ‘reason’ why it would not be attractive to many so-called ‘ordinary’ people, if they were given genuine opportunities to enjoy it.
‘Community arts’ whilst essential, and indeed an excellent way to engage people in the artistic experience, are not a substitute for the ‘real thing’. Let’s not apologise for the fact that high art can be challenging or even difficult. There are plenty of massively accomplished performers and artists in Liverpool who came originally from less privileged backgrounds; what took them forward was the chance, often in unlikely circumstances, to discover that they had real talent in their specialist fields.
An exciting route to personal development
Music, drama and other arts can offer people amazing ways to expand their experience and lives. Everyone in Liverpool who cares about opportunities opening up for all our citizens must, as Councillor Bradley would surely if asked agree, say loud and clear that high art and community art alike are part of everyone’s cultural entitlement.
All the citizens of Liverpool should be encouraged by the active example of our leaders to try the whole cultural offer, not just (though this may come first) the ‘community’ part of it. ‘High art’ isn’t just for ‘tourists’, it adds meaning to the lives of many people of every background and experience; it’s for us all.
Monday Women ’05: Let’s Have A Party!
The Monday Women group in Liverpool held its end-of-year celebration this evening, bringing together women of many different experiences and walks of life. The future may continue to be challenging for us all, but there is no doubt that the women who came together tonight feel very positive about what is in store for 2006.
This evening was the annual Monday Women end-of-year event, or ‘Christmas Do’, as ever at the Everyman Bistro in Liverpool’s Hope Street. We usually meet on the first Monday of the month just from 5.30 till 7 pm, but for the December meeting only we have a rather more extended event.
This year our chosen theme, presented with great flair by two ‘members’ of the group, was our wishes for ourselves and others for the coming year – and so we found ourselves, after a meal and a drink, sitting in a big ‘circle’ (actually a four-tables-length oblong) creating paper flags, with coloured pens, glue and glitter, which then became our thirty-flag pendant-bunting for the future.
A mixed group, but a strong commitment
The Monday Women ‘group’ is a completely free, and totally accessible, company of women from all walks of life who simply chose whenever they can to come together to talk and share. Sometimes this coming together is via the Monday Women Yahoo e-group, and sometimes it’s in the physical space of the Everyman Bistro.
People come and people go, but there is always a welcome when they appear; no-one organises it, the appearances and the welcome are both offered without reservation or condition. Some of those involved are young, some really quite a bit older, some already know each other, some when they arrive do not. It really doesn’t matter. Despite the variety of Monday Women, though, there is a strong sense of shared values and commitment, to the human condition in general and to the specific part/s women take in it.
Wishes for a strong and fair future for us all
Perhaps it is not surprising that the women this evening, some first-timers, some now ‘old friends’, shared a common optimism and good will as they surveyed the year ahead.
No-one, as I saw it, considered that issues of equality have now been resolved; no-one thought these were not worthy still of consideration; but everyone saw their future as positive.
We have (literally) flown our paper flags for 2006, and we have written ourselves good wishes for the coming year which we shall revisit next December. The evening was a lively, positive affirmation of our hopes for what is to come, both for those of us who were there in the Everyman this evening, and for women everywhere.
Musicians in Many Guises
The music profession is amongst the least clearly defined of occupations. Neither within the profession nor amongst the wider public is there a proper understanding of how everything functions and fits together in this apparently most abstract and etherial of worlds.
I went to a very interesting session with musicians across the northern part of England today.
We were discussing how to bring diverse people in diverse parts of the music profession together, to support them and their work. This as an end point is obviously a challenge too far for one day’s debate, but there are a few things I suspect struck everyone as we got into our allocated task.
Avoiding division in diversity
One of the most difficult things about being ‘a musician’ is that on its own it doesn’t mean a great deal. Some musos work a full week, every week, in a contracted, salaried (but often very poorly paid) job, whilst others wing it in free-lance, or maybe just do the occasional weekend gig for a local pub or whatever… in which case they are probably either also in another job, not as a musician, or are perhaps retired or a student.
Add to that the obvious range of ways in which one ‘can’ be a musician – everything from banjo strummer to band vocalist, to jazzer or church organist, to a player in a major orchestra, or an opera singer, composer / arranger, conductor or, of course, educator / teacher – and it’s easy to see that people in the same ‘trade’ often appear to have little in common. And that’s before we acknowledge properly that amateurs and, say, students – both groups eager to perform in front of an audience for the sake of the experience as such – will have a very different take on things from (relatively) hard-headed pros, determined as ever to make a living of sorts from their skills.
Musicians’ training takes years, but life as a pro is a helter-skelter
The problem for many serious professional musicians, whatever their genre, is that they’ve probably invested most of their conscious lives in developing performing and / or other musical skills. But they are going to spend the rest of their lives ‘competing’ with non-professional musicians who are willing to perform for nothing or next-to-nothing, albeit at usually significantly lower levels of skill.
Amateur and semi-pro groups can take months to prepare a performance; full professionals, if they are to earn their crust, often have to get a concert or show ready, at higher levels of skill, in just a few hours. No wonder then that different parts of the musical community don’t always see eye-to-eye.
The answer is in the image
The public at large has a fairly vague idea about the who and how of life as a professional musician and performer. Most musicians hear quite frequently the view that they are ‘lucky’ because they must ‘love’ what they do.
Well, probably yes, but not to the extent that they don’t need a living wage and a bit of time to themselves, or for their families. (No doubt, just as many amateur performers enjoy the buzz of performance, there are times when the professionals, conversely, would appreciate simply quietly being themselves.)
So here’s a connundrum: Music is a very visible activity, usually done in full public gaze. But it is not an activity which just ‘happens’; it’s one which done properly has demanded years of hard work and determination.
Educate the audience as well as the performer
How then do we square the reality of life as a professional musician with the idea that anyone can do it? Can there be any doubt that the answer to this question, (and to the conflicting interests of different sorts of musicians as such) has to lie in education?
Much more money than before is now going into music education in schools, youth groups and the like; but let’s ensure that at least some small part of this and other available resources is invested in telling people about what the lives of musicians of all types offer and demand.
There’s room for every sort of musician, doing different things in different ways, but confusion exists both within the profession itself, and in the wider public, about quite what it all entails. No surprise then that misunderstandings and misapprehensions can become the order of the day, with performers often the first casualty of this failure to connect image and reality.
See also: Orchestral Salaries In The U.K.
Life In A Professional Orchestra: A Sustainable Career?
The Healthy Orchestra Challenge
British Orchestras On The Brink
Where’s The Classical Music In The Summer? An Idea…
Dreaming Realist 