Category Archives: The Journal
Tim Berners-Lee has a weblog!
So now the founder of the world-wide web has his own website. And it’s great to see how warmly people have responded to it.
It’s a bit of a surprise that it’s only just happened, but Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who created the world-wide web, has just started a weblog. I just saw an entry about it, dated 12 December this year… and then the excellent ‘In Praise Of’ Guardian editorial appeared.
Too early no doubt to say what we shall all learn from this contribution to the www, but it’s heartening to see that many of the early responses have been outpourings of appreciation and thanks for what Sir Tim achieved. He may not, as a contributor on this humble weblog noted, have made any money from his amazing contribution to communication technology, but he must surely be enjoying the warmth of all the responses to his work.
English Regions or City-Regions?
Protagonists for City-Regions are often much less sympathetic to the rationale for the English Regions as such. But perhaps it’s all a matter of differential scales. City Regions could well choose, to their mutual benefit and that of their hinter-lands, to collaborate on some of the much bigger strategic things without fear of damage to historic and local identities.
The debate about City-Regions vs. English Regions shows no signs of resolving. The recent launch of a campaign for an Elected Mayor in Liverpool (and some other towns and cities) has if anything exacerbated the differences between those who support regionalism as such, and those who support city-regions within England, or presumably, come to that, anywhere else.
Whilst there are obviously some areas where people may not ever agree, I do however believe there are a number of areas of common cause between the protagonists for each ‘side’, if the issues are looked at in a particular light.
The meaning of ‘regionalism’
For those who take a strongly anti-regional line the main problem seems to be that they perceive this as inevitably favouring one stronger city over other cities in the region… indeed, they may even take the view that there is no such thing as a region, as a way to circumvent such a perspective entirely.
In this view the real issue is the power of one place over others, and the expectation that, given half a chance, this place will take unfair advantage, at significant cost to other towns and cities nearby.
On the other hand, to at least some people who would support a regional persepctive alongside a city-focused one (and there are few regionalists who don’t also favour the healthy growth of cities per se), the underlying issue is connectivity. Who will make the case for, e.g., good road and rail connections between different cities within the region and, even more importantly, the way that very large centres of population – especially the metropolis – connect with the region at all?
Taking this perspective, there may be surprising commonalities even with towns and cities in other regions. For instance, Birmingham shares with the northern cities the issue of getting traffic up and down the country – and has in fact begun exploring solutions to this problem with them.
Size is the basic issue
Evidence elsewhere in Europe suggests that a population of between 7 and 10 million can be effectively self-sustaining in terms of producing all the requirements for modern society. But no U.K. city outside London is of this size – which means that English cities must necessarily be inter-dependent in some respects. For instance, (genuinely) Big Science can never happen just with the resources of one city, any more than can ‘Big Medicine / Technology’ and so forth. There are plenty of win-wins in inter-city collaboration for science and industry, just as there are endless reasons why the more ambitious aspects of tourism are often best promoted on at least a regional basis (see quote in New Start magazine from the English Regional Development Agencies).
But what the size issue doesn’t mean is that cities have to lose their identities, or that there must be ‘regional centre’ cities wicih will effectively dictate to all the other places in a region what they may and may not do. This maintenance of identity and self-determination provides one of the strongest cases for elected mayors or similar – provided always (a big proviso) that such leaders are well-informed, brave and sensible….
Unique identities, shared strengths
This is a rather optimistic view, but maybe there will come a time when people generally can see that there is indeed strength in commonality when it comes to the big things (massive inward investment, the knowledge economy, large-scale infrastructure etc.), but that with this does not need to come loss of identity for individual places and smaller areas within a geographical location such as a ‘region’ of England. Rather the opposite.
Perhaps it’s a matter of confidence. When we, smaller-city citizens across the nation, are confident that our own patch is well-recognised and well-defined, it will be easier to agree with our neighbours on shared strategies for the bigger things. But how to develop that confidence from where we’re at now is, however you look at it, a challenge and a half.
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.
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.
Ideas Need People to Happen
Bright ideas are an essential part of adaptation and change; but failing to think empathetically through how and by whom the ideas will be implemented, and what personal impact of the ideas will have on all concerned, is almost guaranteed to produce problems.
It’s hardly a new concept, but sometimes it needs to be said: the inspiration behind change may be how it all (anything) starts, but if the people involved don’t buy in, it won’t happen as it was supposed to.
I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot, as I observe the many changes currently taking shape at national and local level. The ‘people’ bit is so obvious, that surely it must be the first consideration when the bright ideas folk get together to decide what’s to happen. But often it’s not.
Human beings, not ‘agents’
Say, for the sake of argument, that the local authorities decide to take forward an environmental, health or housing proposal. Firstly, there will be discussion amongst a small group of officials or other movers and shakers, then there will be a public phase where posters or leaflets are put about inviting involvement, and perhaps modifications to the plans are made; and then there will be the implementation.
But by the time implementation arrives the ideas will have taken on a life of their own. Many folk will have no idea why the proposals arose in the first place, and all they will see are problems – some of these identified at the consultation stage, and some of them more directly about the personal issues which have since arisen. And, more often than not, some of these problems will affect those, theoretically the agents of change, who are supposed to be taking the idea forward.
Unexplained actions and unanticipated consequences
The classic of course is, as part of the process, to threaten the employment or other security / safety of those who will have to effect or experience the change. It might be supposed that this will have been considered, but often it appears not to have been.
Rearguard action is almost guaranteed if jobs, homes or other deeply familiar / personal experience is under threat; and whilst compliance may be possible if enough cash or other incentive is on the table, many of those who are least receptive may also be least well informed… or else they do understand very well, but feel they have no stakehold in what’s happening. This is the recipe for a pretty rough ride all round.
Empathy
Change is never easy, but I often think it would be easier – and probably more accurately focused – if those who produce the ideas could empathise more with those who will encounter, or will have to deliver, the consequences. Empathy is not the same as sympathy, it’s just a way of imagining how others may perceive or feel about something, and then managing that well for everyone.
There are very few areas of human activity where empathy or emotional intelligence, properly used, will not help things along. It’s a shame, therefore, that more emphasis isn’t put on this important aspect of human experience right from the first glimmer of any significant people-involved idea. The development of empathy as a professional skill is much undervalued.
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.
Rural Comfort Zones Aren’t Always Comfortable
There is, despite modern technology and communications, a huge divide in understandings between rural and urban communities. Those in isolated locations are in some ways particularly vulnerable, as their young people leave and they resist change. Perhaps in this they have more in common with inner-city living than they appreciate, but the real risk is that these isolated communities may simply disappear.
What proportion of the UK population, I wonder, has ever been to the Scottish Highlands and Islands, or the very tip of Cornwall, or even to Pembrokeshire or Holy Island? Not that many, I’d guess, despite the fame and slightly mysterious aura of such locations.
But there again, I doubt that most people who live in these beguiling places have much knowledge, or even perhaps an accurate image, of what happens in our great cities, or in Britain’s busy market towns and ports. And of those folk who are well acquainted with urban society, I’d guess most don’t much like it, if they’ve chosen to live in the more far-flung of our wilder or more isolated places.
Does it matter if people stay in their comfort zones?
Most of the time, it’s none of anyone else’s business whether people in given locations are aware of other ways of life. None of us has the template for the ideal lifestyle, and none of us can claim we’ve got it sorted.
There is however a difficulty with the laisser faire approach to lifestyle at the point where it constrains and even threatens the very style we may have chosen. Things are never at a standstill; and this means that with denial of change may actually come the destruction of the way of life preferred.
Small communities become unviable without change
My musings on this subject arise from a recent conversation about an isolated community in north-west Scotland where a new arrival had the bright idea of developing a ‘sanctury’ to which wealthy paying visitors would come. This idea so shocked the more established residents, despite the promise of more jobs and increased investment in their community, that it had to be dropped.
Yet at the same time, here was a rapidly dwindling and aging population who constantly bemoan the way their youngsters have deserted the fold for places urban, or at least more ‘exciting’. What a surprise.
The local perspective isn’t all the story
So, on the one hand we have an enthusiastic newcomer who wants to attract new work and interests into the area, and on the other we have a group of villagers who resent and are highly suspicious of all things new.
The idea that visitors might seriously want to pay to come and enjoy what is there every day for locals doesn’t come into it, because the locals appreciate in a very different way the wonderful commodities (clean air, peaceful and stunning beauty, calm and quiet) they routinely experience. For local people, this ‘experience’ is not a ‘resource’ to invest in reviving their village.
Visitors of course bring with them a certain amount of disruption – but the very topography of these isolated locations means that this cannot be huge. There is absolutely no risk of motorways or hideous ten storey hotels! The problem, it seems to me, is that familiarity – the comfort zone as ever – is often dangerous. If you can’t adapt to new opportunities, you are in danger of losing those you already have.
Fear of the unknown
Perhaps the underlying problem is fear of the unknown – a strange and puzzling phenomenon in these days of instant-fix communication, but one which can afflict people anywhere, urban or rural.
But there’s a special urgency here for some isolated communities. In modern society a culture which doesn’t adapt is likely to be one which contains the seeds of its own destruction. Ironically, without some acceptance of change there is the prospect of a tragic scenario for numbers of small rural communities which until recent times may have existed relatively unchanged for centuries.
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…
Unsure Start For Sure Start?
The idea of ‘joined up’ services and support for babies and young children and their carers is excellent. The delivery is of course more complex. Sure Start may not as yet be a complete or fully accessed programme, but it is already showing us ways forward which hold promise for the future.
Sure Start’s a great idea. It’s intended to bring together all the support and services required by parents and carers of young children (up to their fourth birthday), so that those perhaps otherwise at risk will be able to flourish alongside their more fortunate classmates-to-be.
A National Evaluation of Sure Start report out this week from Birkbeck College, London, suggests however that at best the impact of Sure Start so far is ‘patchy’. Well, just three years from inception, I’d be rather surprised if it were anything else.
Grounded research
This, of course, is also what the evaluators say. Sure Start is a programme to reverse unconstructive or unfocused cultural patterns of behaviour which have sometimes now been embedded for decades. This is quite a challenge; and at present the programme still struggles to reach some of its target ‘audience’.
It may feel difficult to say this so starkly, but children may have very little chance unless they are offered more care and encouragement than some parents and carers can give. Fortunately, the very large majority of parents love their children; but that, without a synergy between positive examples of how to conduct onesself in adulthood and the opportunities to do so, is a tough call. This I think is what the evaluators are seeing thus far.
Tying future prospects into current contexts
It’s not just provision for small children which is on the agenda here. There’s also the whole question of how adults with the care of these children perceive and respond to their own world.
The message is not necessarily that new mothers (or indeed fathers) need to work full-time right now, but rather that they need to feel engaged in and connected with their communities and the opportunities which are there and on offer – whether joined up services, voluntary and social activities, education and training or whatever else.
Adults who themselves thrive in the world they inhabit are also adults who can care more confidently for their children. If we can help those currently engaged in caring for their young children to see a promising and potentially more prosperous future, then surely these adults will be more comfortably able to enjoy and nurture their small charges now.
Dreaming Realist 