Category Archives: Equality, Diversity And Inclusion
Menage A Trois With A Violin
Musicians and their instruments often have a very particular relationship, almost ‘human’ in some respects. Here is an example of a three-way arrangement which offers even those on the side-line, in this case the notoriously long-suffering ‘orchestra wife’, something uniquely special and positive.
The Strad dropped through our post box this morning, arriving on cue for our monthly up-date of All Things Violinistic (or, as they say of themselves, as the ‘voice of the string music world since 1890’).
The magazine (journal?) carried the usual range of articles about performing styles, who’s the newest arrival on the block, current techniques for making instruments, the latest string recordings, and, in amongst the other inserts, a special poster of the exact dimensions of the Antonio Stradivari violin of 1721, the ‘Kruse’. Hardly the stuff of general reading, this, but that kind of specialist detail has been the backdrop to my life for the past four decades or so. In other words, I’m married to a professional violinist.
Three’s not always a crowd
There are no Stradivaris in our house, but there is a violin which has served very well for many years. It took some eighteen months to find – it had to ‘speak’ orchestrally and as a chamber instrument, whilst remaining within the stratosphere price-wise – and it caused us penury, but it’s been a very constant companion.
Here is an almost ageless piece of ‘equipment’, already over a century old, which carries without doubt a fascinating history. (Anyone who saw the film The Red Violin, with such an impressively reflective performance by Joshua Bell of
John Corigliano’s score, will want to know more… but we’ve been acquainted with this instrument – oddly, also red – only since the era of that very different cultural phenomenon, the age of Flower Power.)
A voice with a mind of its own
I’ve lost count of the number of violins which come and go in this household – tiny (‘quarter’ and ‘half’) ones for little beginner student violinists, tough relatively modern Mittenwald instruments for open air use, intriguing painted ones for amusement, most recently a genuine rock electric model – but ‘the’ violin remains aloof from these passing visitors, a trusted and constant companion to its owner, to his partner musicians and indeed to me.
This violin met its match in a beautiful bow, and it stays here, 
serenely assured of its incumbency. It has seen joy and sadness, comings together and partings, sickness and health. It has travelled the world and explored the local neighbourhoods.
A welcome guest
Often, I suspect, this instrument tells its owner more about inner thoughts and feelings than could any words.
In a very different way, the film Un Coeur en Hiver, with its haunting music from Ravel’s Piano Trio, also explored the enigmas of this violinistic inner voice. For me too, though much more happily, our musical domestic ‘trio’ has offered a partnership which crosses from what can be articulated in normal ways to what cannot.
Inevitably, there are times when the violin takes first call – though I doubt any real examples of the stereotypically self-denying ‘orchestra wife’ now exist, not least because so many current players are women (and in any case, what orchestral salary supports a whole family?). When the music plays I go about my business contentedly alone, taking the distant musical role simply of involuntary audience whilst I work.
But to know so well the relationship between an instrument, a player and that person’s music – to have heard almost as though performing them wonderful works such as the Brahms’ Quintet for Piano and Strings – is a gift well beyond any singular demands of this particular menage a trois.
The ‘Thank You’ Officer
Local communities need people who are engaged and involved – and if possible, even happy. Thanking people regularly for what they do would be a good start here….. and it might even fit the government’s intended move to ‘Double Devolution’.
There’s been a lot in the media of late about how happy or otherwise people are. The gist often seems to be that although our wealth and standards of living are hugely better than they were, people are no happier than before.
I once read that one of the Scandinavian countries decided to do away with ‘targets’ for public services; they just set the objective of increasing ‘customer’ satisfaction by a certain percentage each year – and it worked.
This set me wondering whether the same sort of principle might be employed to increase community engagement.
‘Thank yous’ denote recognition
Perhaps every town should have a Thank You Officer – someone whose job or allocated task it is to find out about the good and helpful things which individuals and groups in the community have done, and who would then arrange for them to be thanked publicly. (There are of course already various formal awards systems etc; but this would be an on-going and integral part of the civic life of the community, not something you have to wait months in silence to be ‘awarded’.)
This strategy might have three positive upshots. Firstly, the people who did the ‘good deed’ would feel appreciated, and perhaps even want to do more of the same.
Secondlly, public recognition offers positive role models and might encourage others also to make additional community input.
And thirdly, it would assist the powers-that-be and the strategists in perceiving the difference which local people (at all levels) can make in their own and their neighbours’ communities. This, as has been commented before, is not always apparent to those whose job is to deliver policy.
Double Devolution
Perhaps encouragement to acknowledge what is contributed to a community would help the policy makers understand what matters to people in that community, and to see where simple support, not official ‘direction’ or formal strategy, can be the order of the day.
Not everything needs to be led from on high; and sometimes (though not always) local people have a better grasp of what needs doing next than anyone else. It’s all a matter of combining local understanding with that essential wider vision – so why not start by appreciating much more those on the ground who seem keen to think-on about their communities? They’re the folk who, with support, can make it happen.
This could be the start of a really genuine Double Devolution of power, at the points where it matters.
The ideal job?
Is Thank You Officer the ideal task or job? And would it repay the costs pretty quickly?
Only time would tell. There would be snags in this idea, as there are in all other ideas, but saying Thank You is something which might increase both engagement, and also satisfaction, across the board.
A Taxonomy Of Enterprise For Growth Theory?
The knowledge economy is a huge area, with impact at every level from the micro to the massively macro. Yet there is still much debate, influenced by celebrated economists such as Robert Solow and Paul Romer, about whether technological progress produces economic growth, or vice versa. One commentator, David Warsh, has recently suggested that this debate currently throws only limited light on economists’ understanding of how economies make progress. Perhaps nonetheless there are interesting questions which arise here in terms, particularly, of the impact of ‘invention’ and ideas in, say, social enterprise environments?
If technological progress dictates economic growth, asks The Economist, (‘Economic focus: the growth of growth theory‘, 20 May 2006, p.96), what kind of economics governs technological advance?
The Economist article and blog praises David Warsh‘s new book, Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations, and his analysis of the shifting understanding of the genesis and impact of technological advance.
‘Ideas as goods’
In his book Warsh examines Nobel prize winner Robert Solow‘s supposed notion that ideas are bound to end up in diminishing returns (they are ‘exogenous’ to economic growth theory), and contrasts it with the proposition of Stanford University’s Professor Paul Romer, that ideas are endogenous to growth theory – that they can be part of it.
In this analysis there are as I understand it three main principles:
1. ideas are ‘non-rival’ – i.e. they can be used by as many people as care to, at the same time;
2. ideas are expensive to produce, but almost without cost to reproduce;
3. nonetheless, the business of reproducing ideas does not usually give much in respect of financial returns, because ideas, being ‘free’ to reproduce, end up having very little economic value.
But goods in what market?
From these three premises it is easy to see that ideas have to be ‘protected’ if they are to have ‘value’ in normal business markets. In other words, they have to be copyrighted; and at the same time obviously other people have to be educated to a level where they can usefully employ these ideas, once they have ‘bought’ them.
But does this apply to all types of ‘market’? I’ve been musing for a while on the idea that enterprise can be taxonomised in ways which make differentiation of impact (on ideas, people, systems) quite interesting. The normal ‘for profit’ economy behaves in one way, the ‘ideas generator’ ‘academic’ economy sometimes behaves rather differently, and the ‘social’ or ‘not-for-profit’ economy probably behaves in a different way again.
All these responses make sense to the ‘actors’ involved. Commercial business people aim very clearly at protecting their ideas in the knowledge economy; but academics and social entrepreneurs currently often promote their ideas without much reference to the ‘business’ value of the ‘invention’ because they are more concerned, respectively, with their status or with general social outcomes, than they are with how fast the actual money flows in their particular direction.
Shifting bases of ideas production?
Over time, things may change of course. The same edition of The Economist which carries the Growth Theory article also has a piece on shifts in the understanding of American academics concerning intellectual and real estate property values. Likewise, the economics of social enterprise is still in its infancy.
Maybe economics at the ‘small’ level – the level of academic and social-enterprise activity – is like the physics of particles… ‘nano’ behaviour is different from larger-scale activity in its impact.
Whatever (and here I’m trying to articulate something which others will understand much better than I), it’s likely that over time the behaviour of those who produce academic and / or ‘social-technical’ ideas in the new knowledge economies will change. The question is, how and when?
The impact of benefit from ideas
Who will ‘profit’ from these changes? And, in the end, could the impact of freely shared ideas be felt even on the global scale, if the sharing extended to developing economies as well as those where the knowledge economy already has huge impact?
Will the growing realisation that all ideas have economic value in some sense lead to attempts to ‘protect’ social-technical invention as well as as the ‘normal business’ sort? Or will there be a continued wish to leave the way open for sharing and mutual development – just as, for instance, Tim Berners-Lee chose to do, when he created the world-wide web?
Do Gender Pay Audits Bring Wages Down?
There’s a debate to be had about gender pay audits or reviews. To be effective, should they be compulsory and public? Do they have the desired effect on pay equality? And could they result in pay equity within given occupations, but even lower overall wages where the majority of the workforce is female?
The Fawcett Society reported recently that 30 years of equal pay legislation has taken us almost nowhere in terms of income equite between men and women. Apparently, it will be roughly another 85 years before we can hope to see this in reality.
In other words, sometime never… So obviously we’re not getting it quite right, despite the legislation.
Equal pay audits
One ‘solution’ which has been proposed is compulsory equal pay audits in employing organsiations The logic of this way forward is already being followed by some organisations such as the NHS (National Health Service, Agenda for Change) and socially responsible companies, where careful parity of pay against task is already established. But many businesses do not do it.
At least in theory such audits or reviews would ensure equal pay for equal work. This is something few would argue against.
Making it fair
But is there a snag, unless the audit is compulsory for everyone? If only some types of employment – for instance, in the third and public sectors – oblige by doing the decent thing, will that result in higher wages, probably for the usual parties, in other unmeasured and unreported sectors?
And would this also mean that wages in those sectors which are monitored take a general downward turn? – There is plenty of historical evidence of average wages falling in given occupations as numbers of women in them increase.
Maybe this is a bit like the situation reportedly found in Scandinavia, where people’s tax returns are posted for all to see? Cynics have been known to suspect that high earners sometimes find a haven for their money outside that declarable fiscal area… with the loss to the national economy which that is thought to entail.
Plugging the gaps?
How are we to deliver fair and equal return on endeavour without having ‘havens’ for those who consider themselves above that sort of thing? If there’s a sensible answer, many of us would be pleased to hear about it.
Anti-mother Discrimination And Reluctant Parenting: A Solution?
A recent survey suggests young people prefer material benefits to babies. But maybe hesitation about starting a family is more about uncertainty whether one’s parenting will be good enough, than in wanting ‘more’ materially. And there is hope for the future of young families, not least in the support which Sure Start programmes are now beginning to deliver across the country.
The Guardian / ICM poll on attitudes to having children, reported today (2.5.06), demands careful reading.
The Guardian editorial on this important survey identifies some critical issues about contemporary attitudes to families and parenting. Now that young women and men feel equally free to pursue serious careers it is unsurprising that both should be cautious about producing babies; though this does not self-evidently suggest that babies are not valued of themselves. Perhaps rather it’s concern about whether potential parents can provide ‘good enough’ care for their intended offspring which holds them back….. That, and the certainty that mothers still can’t win when it comes to combining work and parenthood.
It is true that, as the Guardian leader says, there is a role here for government in supporting families and parenting, but it’s less than accurate in suggest that this nettle has not been grasped. Amongst a range of initiatives is the national Sure Start programme, now developing across the country.
Sure Start programmes support parenting
Local Sure Start programmes in many places are working on the issues which underlie current concerns of parents and potential parents. By 2008-10 there will be Children’s Centres all around the country, catering not ‘just’ (as Sure Start programmes currently do) for less advantaged young families, but for everyone. They will aim to accommodate the crucial fact that, as one parent commented, it ‘costs a lot’ financially and personally to go out to work when one has children.
Sure Start and the anticipated Children’s Centres still face many challenges, but they are genuinely good news….. look out for National Sure Start Month, in June.
Ironically, because Sure Start and Children’s Centres have so far focused on less advantaged families, they have not yet reached the chattering classes; so no-one’s noticing them. Soon however these programmes will be at a place near you, and to everyone’s benefit.
Acknowledge it or lose it?
It would be a sad irony if, in having started where it matters most of all, the government were not now to be given the credit for what will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity really to make a difference to the prospects of families of every sort – including those of hardworking professionals of both genders – right across the nation.
May Day
May Day has been with us for centuries. Its overt meanings, and even the actual date, may change, but the sense of taking a day to do something different and more personal remains. People in every age and every part of the world have welcomed the onset of Summer and the chance to throw a party.
It’s May Day today. The first of May, that unequivocal date which, unlike the contested first day of Spring (is it the vernal equinox on 20/21 March, or the newer BBC version on 1 March?), is firmly set in the European calendar.
When I was small I genuinely thought that May Day was about Morris Dancers and Maypoles. We lived in villages in Hampshire, Wiltshire and then Gloucestershire, and my father was a rural science teacher who took his local community involvement seriously – so we all enjoyed a flavour of the festive rituals of many centuries, and are none the worse for that.
Holding on to traditions and ideas
I suppose that in some ways that was the end of a very long period in history, already mostly shattered by global stife and the increasing grip of technology. Looking back, it might be seen as idyllic, though that it certainly wasn’t; give me double glazing, wider horizons and lots of running hot water any day.
But there are vestiges of the ‘old’ May Day way of life which still resonate. The festivals (May Day, Harvest and what have you) were unselfconscious and for everyone. Our understanding of the seasons and cycles of the earth – I learned about crop rotation at a very early age, and about its history back to mediaeval times not much later – is something which still informs my perceptions, albeit now in terms of eco-systems. And the things we did were family inclusive; sometimes overly so, but at least everyone was there.
New meaning for old ideas
Only after I came to the city did I learn that there was also another ‘meaning’ to May Day – its use, on the first Monday of May, as a celebration of workers’ rights. Thus, 1 May 1886 in the United States saw the very first International Workers’ Day…. not to be confused with 1 September, which after historical debate is now set in America as Labor Day.
Such reinvention of celebratory events is not however confined to the U.S.A. In Liverpool since 1978, when the date first became a Bank Holiday, we have seen the first Monday in May used to underpin general festivities, to recognise Trade Unions and, occasionally, to celebrate shire horses. The scope is huge in a place with such long historical links to labour, but also with wide-open spaces such as Sefton Park right by the city centre.
Modern May Day
Activities this year for May Day are a million miles away from my hazy childhood recollections. There range from a demonstration in London to promote a Trade Union Freedom Bill, to a grass-roots Labor Arts Festival in Edmonton, Canada and a Maypole event at Liverpool’s Tudor half-timbered Speke Hall and Morris dancers (yes!) outside our wonderful St. George’s Hall, via big marches and strikes across the U.S.A. in favour of regularising the status of illegal workers.
Thus morphs the traditional May Day in a more politically conscious era, whether the objective be workers’ rights or a determiniation to see celebration through the arts of community in a more fragmented world. We can only be glad, whatever the detailed argument about the causes espoused, that people still see fit to make the effort.
We have lost much of the original understanding of May Day, and I’d guess that many people active today are not even aware of its historical roots. But things change only in some ways. For every person involved in worthy trade union activity today, there are probably still hundreds carrying on the original idea behind May Day, taking a day off work and getting out their lawnmower or barbecue set, as they prepare for some family’n’friends time in the garden.
Let’s hope the sun shines for everyone, demonstrators, gardeners and revellers alike.
To Blog Or Not To Blog? That Is The Question
The nature of ‘blogging’ has been quite throughly explored of late; but here is the humble observation of a person who is actually trying to do it, and to find a new way of sharing ideas into the bargain.
Having now completed 150 entries over a period of six month on this Weblog, I hope I’m beginning to get the hang of it.
I read recently that a new Blog is created somewhere every second of every day, but that half of them fold within three months. Frankly, I’m not surprised. I expect that for quite a lot of people it’s bit like writing a Diary, and after a while Life takes over….
More a Journal than a Diary
For me, however, this exercise has become defined in my head as ‘journalistic’, in the sense of examining the events and ideas of the moment – or perhaps sometimes those which are distinctly against the grain of that moment?
And in that too I’m not alone. Both The Economist and The Guardian, for instance, are currently engaged in what might be called meta-analysis of the ‘meaning’ of contemporary journalism; and both have concluded that a lot of it will in future involve direct engagement with the reader.
What is a blog?
Indeed, The Economist‘s Survey of new media, published this week, addresses the issues very clearly: A blog, argues Dave Winer who pioneered weblog software, is ‘the unedited voice of a single person’, preferably amateur and, in The Economist‘s words, having ‘a raw, unpolished authenticity and individuality’. This, it seems to be agreed, is what distinguishes blogs from formal newspapers; just as blogs must in the view of readers be accessible and personal in a way that organisational productions often cannot be.
Well, obviously, I couldn’t possibly comment in this particular context; but I do feel that approaching my Blog Journal over quite a time now has changed my understanding of what it’s all about. To start with I was quite nervous of sharing these ideas, and then I began to feel more confident that readers would understand the spirit in which they are offered – as indeed has always been the case.
More direct and better linked?
And I suspect that I now write more directly than I did to begin with. It’s quite a challenge to move away from ‘academic speak’ whilst still trying to stick to the established rules of evidenced-based commentary. But what I’ve lost in third party style has perhaps been compensated for by my better grasp now of how to link / reference my pieces to other writers’ work, directly through the internet. It’s a challenge always to find the right links to illustrate a given point, but I’m coming to think that even partial connection is better than none.
What next?
So what next? Well, discussions with Nick Prior, who designs this website for me, have taken me to thinking we need photographs! This will not make the weblog a newspaper, but it may help to add interest and show you more about what’s what, especially when I write about events and places I know. My first assignment of this photographic sort was therefore today, in Sefton Park.
And maybe I shall try some more ideas as well… an educational or musical ‘column’, or something special about Liverpool, perhaps? Who knows? Or perhaps by Entry No. 200 we shall all know?
Thank you as ever for joining with us in this adventure.
Good News On Hope Street
It has been over a decade since the campaign to renew Liverpool’s Hope Street was first mooted; but now at last we’re almost there. To mark the event, all the partners involved have agreed to host a day in June [later deferred to Sunday 17 Septmeber ’06] of arts-based celebration on the street. The arts, as ever, will give us common cause and help us to enjoy together the space which we have all been hoping to see refurbished for so long.
Today marks a new phase in the development of Liverpool’s Hope Street Quarter.
It may not have looked much to the casual observer – just a handful of people talking about an event in June. But to me it seems really significant: we, that is HOPES: The Hope Street Association and Liverpool Vision and the City Council have agreed to co-host a celebration of the completion of the Hope Street refurbishment, open to all who want to be there, and acknowledging the very complex partnerships which we have had to nurture over the past few years to get to where we are today.
The arts as common ground
Here, if ever there was one, is an example of how people coming from very different places can find common ground – a particularly apt metaphor in this instance – through the arts and community activity. If everything goes according to plan, mid June this year will see people from many communities sharing a friendly, family, fun event in Hope Street, enjoying the many ways in which we can all become involved in arts and community activities. [Later note: the event eventually came about on 17 September ’06, as part of a wider Hope Street Festival Day.]
The connectivity is why this event is so important for me. On the one hand we have very large organisations – the North West Development Agency in this instance – and on the other, we hope, the smallest arts groups and people from local communities, all sharing the successful completion of a long and testing project, over a decade in the making.
We’re not quite there yet – there are still many other things to attend to as we make progress on this exciting regeneration programme – but we’re well on the way. And the door is open to everyone who wants to be involved!
Regeneration Means Looking After What You’ve Got, As Well As What You Aim For
Plans for a future Mersey Tram are in tatters at the same time as the very real Mersey Ferry landing stage lies under water. More care for current assets and less dispute about proposals still on the drawing board might have served the Liverpool sub-region better. Regeneration is about looking after what we already have, even as we dream about the future.
Transport arrangements in Liverpool have been somewhat topsy turvey of late.
Am I the only person who wonders how we could be letting our main Passenger Ferry landing stage slip into the Mersey at the same time that we are making such a fuss about the ‘loss’ of the proposed Tram?
After five years of plans and plotting it seems the Trams are not to return to Liverpool, at least in the foreseeable future. This is obviously a blow to those who fought to see this mode of transport resurrected in the city, not least the Merseytravel team who had already invested heavily in track and the like for construction.
All was not as it seemed
But then we learnt that not everyone within the city council was enthusiastic about this idea. There are stories of counter-briefings and blame in high places.
And whilst this extraordinary tale was unfolding…. the Liverpool Pier Head landing stage fell into the Mersey River. And the Ferries had to be cancelled for the foreseeable future, all because of an ‘unexpected’ tide.
So not only will people from the starkly less advantaged east of Liverpool not get the rapid transport system which many insisted they had needed in order to develop work opportunities for the future, but also people who currently travel into Liverpool from Wirral to work (or vice versa) suddenly found their transport had, quite literally, been sunk.
Lessons worth learning?
There may be lessons here for everyone; and doubtless different people will conclude differently what these lessons are. But for me it’s this: Don’t let grand plans for the future ruin what’s OK about the present.
Too much of the regeneration agenda, in Liverpool and quite possibly elsewhere, is taken up with filling the front pages of the local papers with imaginative and very likely undeliverable ideas; but far too little of this agenda is concerned with nurturing what we have already, whether this be people or physical resources. The second, ‘nurturing’ option may be less dramatic than the ‘visionary’ first, but it’s equally important.
Visions for the future have produced a blinkered view of the present. Whilst Liverpool City Council, Merseytravel and others made plans and perhaps counterplans about the hugely expensive Tram, not much thought was, it seems, being giving to our already famous Ferries. And now we have neither. Perhaps, with a bit less posturing and a bit more thought, we could have had both.
Let’s Celebrate International Women’s Day, Today (8th March 2006)
International Women’s Day is not a huge occasion for most people; but maybe it could be if we all grasped this annual opportunity to examine and where possible to celebrate, on a year-on-year basis, what progress has been made in gender equality. A start could be made, Monday Women decided, by ensuring we learn Herstory alongside His.
How does one ‘celebrate’ International Women’s Day? And, indeed, should one? This was one of the topics discussed by Monday Women in Liverpool, today.
Given that women make up over 50% of the population of the UK, I suppose I shall be impressed when we are also invited to celebrate International Men’s Day… but I do know, really, that this misses the point at least for now.
Anyway, we all do what we can. One year we even managed to produce a chamber concert including previously unheard music by the composer, Dame Ethel Smyth (who probably wrote the music around the very time when first glimmers of the idea of IWD came into being, not that far from where she was studying in central Europe). And on many occasions there have been conferences, readings and much else to recognise the parts women play in contemporary society.
Not a big issue for women or men?
But generally people don’t get very excited about International Women’s Day, as far as I can see. I wish they would. It would be excellent if, on this day, we not only celebrated the contributions of many thousands of unseen, unheard women in our local communities, but also began to ask, really seriously, just why are they so unacknowledged?
There’s a lead story in The Independent today about how campaigners say that unless urgent action is taken on the status of women, the Millennium Development Goals on reducing poverty, infant deaths and standards of education will not be met… but The Indy also reports that only one in four British women counts herself a feminist.
For those of us who have worked over many years to seek empowerment of women alongside men this is in some respects a truly puzzling and disappointing figure; but against it we need to ask what proportion of women in previous generations would taken this label. My guess, overall, is fewer than we imagine, despite Rosie the Riveter and all she taught us.
Herstory…
So let’s make a start by being a bit more realistic. If young people don’t know much about how things were (and how many young people actually want to look backwards at that point in their lives?) they will also not know about how things have changed. We more experienced feminists need to work from what is – i.e. an ahistoric perspective in which all that is wrong now actually seems to younger people to be ‘worse’ than what was before – and to find ways of challenging that strategically, not personally.
Rather than feeling upset that what we have worked for is not understood – upsetting though in my heart I must admit this is – those of us who champion gender equality need to find ways of ensuring that HERstory is told, to everyone, alongside HIStory. Then we shall be able to demonstrate what has already been achieved and, critically, to see more clearly where the obstacles to further progress lie.
Whose responsibility?
In curriculum terms, responsibility for herstory obviously lies with the schools and the government. But in other ways it lies with us all. I would like to see a focus on International Women’s Day 2007 on what each aspect of our daily lives has offered over the past year in terms of opportunities and life experience for women and men. Could this be a challenge for the media, and for us all? An agenda we could start to set now, for next year and all the years which follow?
In the meantime, Monday Women have said it already today on our e-group – have a great day!
Dreaming Realist 