Writings
The price of everything and the value of nothing?
Thoughts about the social impact of the arts. This article first appeared in Arts Professional magazine.Posh, posher, poshest.
An analysis of the elitocracy of the 21st century UK arts scene. This article first appeared in Arts Professional magazine.Goals and Glory : lessons from the managers' bench
Response to Arts Council cuts 2011. This article first appeared in Arts Professional magazine.The Grit in the Oyster: re-visiting the concept of the creative industries
This article was first published in Arts Professional Issue 194 http://www.artsprofessional.co.uk
It takes a look at the industrialisation of creativity and calls for a change in the ways in which we think about the position of culture in the economy.
A matter of ambition: re-visiting class in 21st century Britain
The rise of the BNP, the loss of the support of the traditional working class voter and an election in the offing. Suddenly, in the UK at least, class is back on the agenda.Eleven years into a Labour Government and it takes an independent "panel of experts" to inform us that social mobility is on the decline, the top professions are increasingly out of the reach of all but the most affluent and informal recruitment systems, such as internships and work placements, are becoming a back-door to top jobs for the well-off and better-connected.
What the present working class needs, it seems, is a good old-fashioned dose of aspiration.
After all, as Simon Carr wrote in the Independent last week: "The middle class has never been more open, more accessible, more permeable.........the only thing you have to do to become middle class is to do what the middle class does......The belief that education matters. The desire to know things. The desire to get on in life. The urge to have your children do better than you have done......."
So straightforward: so uncomplicated. How could today's working class have failed to grasp such a basic tenet? Is it that they simply don't have the ambition, the determination or the drive of some of those 1950s counterparts?
Or is it, as it has always been, more complex than that? In the search for some clues, I re-examine my own childhood in post-war Britain.