A rant on face book
A colleague in Scotland posted a dismayed message on fb...
"Feeling utterly crushed by everything?
There's just too much to fight against?
Everything that people have built up to protect each other and our families is being dismantled. There are ships in the middle of the Forth right outside my window, it's pretty certain that some of them are test drilling for unconventional gas. The media is owned and controlled by a right wing consensus which is not being challenged by the years of research and practice that shows that austerity and privatisation don't work to make prosperous countries. There's no future in any of this for art, makers, carers, learning, or community. Now the government have made it a crime to speak out against them, and even journalists investigating fracking are being considered by police as 'extremism'. Who does any of this benefit?
Lets have this revolution."
I responded thus...
"My fears and thoughts run in parallel to yours Laura but I have a mightier desperation that drives me now...that instead of intelligent folk being connected to each other through creative process and making - the arts have become so elite and disconnected; artists busy jockeying for position, often so far up our own arses - we are endlessly distracted and distractable. We were not listening. We have let this happen, on our watch. And worse, many of us believe we are part of a solution but are not sufficiently engaged to know what or how to change. Many communities don't care about what we do 'cos we aren't really amongst or helping them. All the nuanced 'cool' of the artworld, afraid of message, mafia behaving like politicians, noctiously nostalgic and sucked in by corporate structure and greed. The revolution starts with us, with what we know and rather than riots and violence and more needless waste, it needs to be back to basics, connected - to earth & creativity and each other. Rather than artists aspiring to more wealth, public funding for cliquey elitists and striving for growth agendas, we need to recognise that the wealth we have, beyond financial reward, the way many artists live with less, is the key to the future for fairer societies. Rather than the beauty spot on the face of a courtesan we need to be the muscle and sinew of our cultures. Appreciating hard work and service, looking beyond ourselves, facilitating meaningful connection, losing the sense of entitlement and rolling up our sleeves. Not flying round the world meeting others like us in far flung places (which I do and understand this pressure in a globalised 'market') but bedding into our towns and cities, getting back to the grist and mill. The change requires hard work, fearless action and resisting the big dramatic gestures. It must be like earth plates shifting; slow, steady and gigantic, impossible to reverse. With you in spirit. xx"
New thinking, new ways forward, taking people on a journey out of the current madness to save our fragile planet and ourselves...that is the job now.
