Le, Mendelsohn and Mark @ Ikon Galleries Reviewed

The Ikon currently has three new exhibitions: The Colony by Dinh Q. Le, Varna Road by Janet Mendelsohn and 108 Leyton Ave by Kelly Mark. The former takes up the first floor of the gallery and the latter two the second floor and Tower respectively. All three exhibitions run from today (27th Jan) to 3^rd April 2016.

The Colony is a set of films about the Chincha Islands which are based in the South China Sea and are rich in Guano, a bird manure of particular high quality. Upon first sight these films appear another twist on the theme of area of natural beauty which is blighted by now disused factories. The films are shot partly by drone and one gets the feeling that the artist is seeking to use the strategy of subversion in their work. You understand this when in some of the footage you see the drone at work.

It is a clever piece of art, but to me a distant piece. It had the feel of a documentary that you were removed from but one where you appreciated the work of the cameraman and editor. It has an associated event on 17^th March, (as part of the Arts and Science Festival 2016), when Dr. Frank Uekotter, Reader in Environmental Humanities at the University of Birmingham is going to be looking at The Legacy of Guano.

It was unfortunate as I started to make my way around the second floor of the exhibition that the fire alarm went off. It was preview night and the building was full. Whilst the staff were very professional and calm in dealing with the emergency it did take some time to empty. I must admit it left me slightly perturbed. If there had been a real fire and it had taken hold would I have made it out? Yet I know this level of activity in the gallery is not the norm. This was preview night and normally the Ikon is less packed.

When I made it back to the second floor I entered the Janet Mendelsohn Varna Road exhibition. This is a piece of social history made up of black and white photographs which is well curated and presented. In addition to the main Exhibition Guide there is a sheet outlining the title (and subject matter of each photo). It is an exhibition of works lent by the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham.

Wandering round one was struck by the images of the period. Images one would not have been surprised to see in films such as Cathy Come Home. That is perhaps not surprising as that film was produced in the mid-1960s and these photographs were taken between 1967 and 1969 when Mendelsohn was a student at the University of Birmingham. She was studying within the renowned Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) with its neo-Marxist focus on cultural analysis.

Her photo essay of this area of Balsall Heath and particularly the life of a sex worker she befriended are a clear exploration of the connections between ethnicity, class and location.  They do not seek to romanticise rather they seek to make the viewer question both their own assumptions and what they are seeing.

There is an associated People's Archive Event on 12th and 13th March where people are invited to come in and share their memories, stories, photos and memorabilia of this former red light district which was so much more than that as Mendelsohn shows us.

I really enjoyed this exhibition with its focus on social history and cultural studies. That of course is in a large part because it hit on my own area of interest, (in a way that the 1^st floor exhibition hadn’t). I also was interested to see how, again, the legacy of the late Stuart Hall lives on in the work of the Ikon. I hope at some point they may consider a full exhibition dedicated to him and his influence.

 

The third and smallest exhibition was more of a traditional piece of art and less of an inter-disciplinary exploration. It was a film which was very cleverly put together by the artist. This film by the Canadian Artist is built upon clichés which relate to the concepts of “everything” and “nothing”. Kelly Mark uses split screen projection to have a conversation with herself which looks like it might be twins bickering.

In addition to being very clever in production it is also clever in that it is based upon a deceiving simplicity. I found myself connecting with this film much more easily than the Dinh Q. Le films because whilst it challenged me to think it was easy to connect with.

So an exhibition with three parts over two floors. All are worth a look and this is an exhibition that is definitely worth giving time to. With the films making up a large percentage of the work on display you need to allow time to watch a good chunk of each.

This is not the only art in the building though. On the way out I noticed a glass ear trumpet which I had not seen there before.  This piece enabled one to listen to the outside world in a mediated way and was fascinating.

Then there was the temporary unintentional art left by people who had either left in a hurry or deposited glasses and guide during the fire alarm. I am a great believer in keeping your eyes open because you often find art in the everyday, not just in the work produced by great artists as are on display here.

Indie Girls taking it back to the 90's

Every so often you sit there listening to BBC Six Music whilst you’re getting on with the rest of life and you will hear something new and think, “yup, I like that”. For me it happened recently with Bruising. I heard it and whilst I didn’t think wow this is something amazing I did smile to myself and think, I really like this, it reminds me of a lot of stuff from the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s.

With the jangly guitars and distinctive female vocals I guess the two bands from that period Bruising most remind me of are Bleach and Sleeper. So there sound isn’t new, but how much is these days? What they are doing well is recapturing the sound of the previous generation.

Another new indie group I’m enjoying listening to is Spanish indie girl group Hinds who play the Hare and Hounds on 23rdFebruary. This gig is one they’re doing supporting the release of their new album Leave Me Alone which is out now. Hinds are a bit less jangly and bit more hippy trippy in places but they’re still fun to listen to. I think this interview and live set on Seattle based radio station KEXP via YouTube is good in showcasing their talent and giving some more info about them.

So that’s two recommendations for you this week both bands I think are worth checking out.

Soul Food: More Art and Music in Birmingham

Pre-Raphaelite art, nativity trails, Martyn Joseph and soul boats have all featured in my most recent travels around Birmingham. I’ve been enjoying the soul food all of these have provided.

To give you a taste of this menu for the senses I start with a taster of what you can find just wandering around the city at the moment. The German Market is taking over most of the city centre and the stalls provide a picturesque walk down between Symphony Hall and Grand Central (New Street Station). At the far end by the Rep and the Library it stands under the shadow of a giant observation wheel and next to a seasonal skating rink. This all provides a picturesque wander around the city, particularly at night. Looking in the windows you can also find wonders such as the Teddy Nativity in the Cancer Research Shop. Then there is also the Bull in the Bullring which has been festively dressed.

The Nativity can also be found through art in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. This trail through the free areas of the museum begins with a beautiful stained glass window Peace and Goodwill by Henry Payne. It was originally in the Methodist Chapel in Cradley Heath and as that place closed has since ended up in the museum. The sheet you use to guide you then takes you on to the work of Edward Burne-Jones, Arthur Hughes, Giovanni Bellini, Orazio Gentileschi and Adrien Isenbrandt amongst others. The Burne-Jones painting The Star of Bethlehem was particularly striking as was The Nativity by Arthur Hughes. The latter was the painting that most got me to stop and reflect on what insight the painting could give me into the bible passages which were familiar. Mary is very young in this picture and whilst not Mediterranean or middle-eastern in appearance there was something more earthy about her than in many other pictures.

Hughes nephew E.R. Hughes is the subject of the current headline exhibition at the gallery Enchanted Dreams. It focuses on his Pre-Raphaelite work and has a mixture of conventional portraits and more imaginative work which seems to mix the colour influences of the impressionists with the style of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Amongst his portraits of children one of Bell and Dorothy Freeman was particularly striking in its beauty. Another one of the portraits which was particularly beautiful was “Study of a Female Head”.  

The central part of the exhibition was Blue Phantasies, a series of paintings he made during the earliest twentieth century. There were three of these paintings which I found particularly beautiful. The first was “The Valkyrie’s Vigil” which was a wonderful mixture of purples and blues. The second was Wings of the Morning which was a beautiful woman flying in the nature of an angel. She represented the light which comes with dawn.  The final one which I loved was “Midsummer Eve” where a mixture of magical folk surround a fairy princess. This exhibition does cost if you don’t have a museums and galleries membership card, but as I have said before it is well worth the cost if you can get one. This was my second visit to the exhibition and no doubt not my last. It is a beautiful piece of calm amid a very busy city at the moment.

St. Phillip's Cathedral has completed their renovation work and has a great piece of community art by Jake Lever called Soul Boats in there. It is a piece which hangs from the ceiling and is well worth a look if you are in the area, and of course it is free to view.

Moving out of the city centre itself I have discovered the suburb of Kings Heath and the Hare and Hounds pub which is one of the significant smaller venues in the city. Tonight it hosts a BBC 6 Music BBC Introducing night, which we have tickets to – having been successful in a free ticket ballot – last night we paid to go and see Martyn Joseph.

This is not the first time I have seen this talented Welsh singer-songwriter (as detailed in my previous review of a gig of his) but there was something palpably different about this one. The anger and angst of the past was gone and seemed to have been replaced by an acceptance of himself. He was clearly aware of this change and at the end of the gig explained to the audience it is because he has moved into a new chapter of his personal life.

The importance of his Welsh identity continued to be central to his set. It was good to hear Please Sir as well as Cardiff Bay and Dic Penderyn (The Ballad of Richard Lewis) – that latter of which kicked off his set.

These older numbers were not the only ones which audience members were familiar with. He went back to the early days with Friday but Sunday’s Coming. There was debate amongst our group of when we first heard it. Having looked back at the sleeve notes in Don’t Talk about Love: Martyn Joseph Live ’92-02 it seems that that track goes back at least to the early ‘90’s.

Amongst the older stuff there was also Kiss the World Beautiful which was resurrected on last year’s album of the same name which was put together to support the Let Yourself Trust, which Martyn has founded to support small grass roots projects in the UK and abroad.

The Luxury of Despair was also a song on the Kiss the World Beautiful CD. This track has also made it on to the new CD Sanctuary. Much of the rest of the set was material from this new album. There was a moving track called Her Name is Rose which was about his mum and celebrating her 80^th birthday and Girl Soldier was also very moving.

His current single off Sanctuary is called I Searched for You which had a catchy sing along chorus.

The venue was quite intimate and suited this type of folk gig well. That combined with there was a bit more music and less chat than in some gigs meant this was one of the best gigs I have seen him play over the last 29 years, and there’s been a few. 

New Art in Birmingham

Birmingham is great, you can find yourself encountering new and interesting art without too much effort. Today we did it by popping into the Waterhall Gallery, which is part of the main Museum and Art Gallery in Birmingham and discovering their Salon 2015 exhibition which is on until the 23^rd December. The other day it was done by going for a bit of a wander and encountering the street art in the Digbeth area, around the Custard Factory.

The Salon exhibition is a selling exhibition organised by New Art West Midlands. It features work by a number of artists including well respected ones such as Vanley Burke and Boyd and Evans.

The range of styles is wide but the exhibition hangs together well and does not appear too overcrowded.

One can certainly enjoy without buying. Although if you are seriously interested in collecting interesting new art which may rise in value this is probably a good way to do it.

There were some really interesting pieces in the exhibition, but unfortunately I did not take a note of their numbers and artists. So apologies for those I cannot credit for their work as I describe it.

The first piece to catch my husband’s eye was of an Afro-Caribbean child surrounded by white dolls. It was one of the deeper pieces of the exhibition.

There was a film of a train journey taken from the cab of a train at various points in the year. This captured my husband’s attention too.

We were both enthralled by a swing which stood as a sculpture. The seat had somehow been suspended in mid swing and it was interesting to think about how that might have been achieved.

One of my favourite pieces was a small picture of Malala which was in paint and had three blocks of colour within it. The reason that I loved this was that unlike many pictures and photographs of this amazing young woman the artist had captured her youth. There was something within this which captured the teenager rather than the stateswoman.

There were also a couple of play houses where the entrances had been boarded up and windows blocked, but this was done in the same kind of plastic the houses had been made of. It was really effective and fun.

Finally there were a couple of limited edition fabric bags – costing far less than the main art. Buying one of these, which captured my sense of humour, as a part of my Christmas present was as far as our budget would go. Yet even that is still art, we are intending to hang it in our lounge.

This really was an art fair which catered for a wide range of interests and budgets and is well worth a look. Another way to buy art in Brum is to support the City of Colours Winter Jam which is a fundraiser happening on the 5^th  December.

There is a great deal of street art around especially in Digbeth. A couple of weeks ago after going to see the Punk Rock!! So What? exhibition at Birmingham City University’s Millennium Point Campus Parkside Gallery. I went on a wander round looking at some. I went wandering on my own but I am aware that there are Birmingham Street Art tours available. (The Mockingbird Theatre within the Custard Factory is where I think I picked up a flyer about it them).

This varied from the strange to the very moving; the small to the massive and the amateur to the professional. Some of them worked well because of their location, some seemed out of place being placed in the midst of urban decline. Some reflected the way the arts are regenerating the area others didn’t.

There were a couple of pieces which really struck me as I wandered round, including the image at the top of this post. As is the nature of street art I don’t know the artists and so cannot acknowledge them but as I say they really moved me. with the depth of what their work was saying. 

 

The angel particularly resonated with me and I regard it as one of the most spiritual images I have been able to engage with. In the unlikely event the artist ever reads this all I can say is thank you for your work. You are incredibly talented and I hope it is ok with you that I will be using this as a worship resource in coming months and probably years.

 

Gadding about on a Budget in Brum

As regular readers will know I have recently found myself living in Birmingham on a somewhat limited budget. My husband is a student presbyter which means we are now living in a vicar factory. He is becoming trained whilst I am learning to be a “clergy spouse”.

I’m discovering there are a range of strategies one can engage for surviving this.  Mine is to escape the environment as much as possible and to enjoy this city fate, God or the Methodist Church (take your pick) has landed us in – on a budget.

This involves looking for a mix of free events, cheap events and ways to save money over the year. Birmingham is the sort of city which enables this. Here are some of my tips of what is coming up and what you might be able to enjoy as well as good ways to find things.

Visual Art and Galleries

In Birmingham many of these are free. You can look round the main Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery for free as you can the Barber Institute of Fine Arts and the Ikon Gallery.

The Ikon’s current exhibition Fiona Banner’s Scroll Down and Keep Scrolling is free to access and is one of the things you can enjoy on October 30^th if you take advantage of the Art Bus between 5 and 9pm. It will be going between the three galleries already mentioned and the mac Birmingham. There will be introductory talks and refreshments at each gallery. The Art Bus is part of Galleries Night where a range of galleries up and down the country will be opening their doors late. In Birmingham visitors can also visit the Parkside Gallery which will be hosting Punk Rock So What. It is on until 13^th November. Really looking forward to this exhibition and the art within it. Not sure if it will have any textiles or not, but Punk produced some great art.

There are also various bits of public art you can find in the city. For example outside Snow Hill Station there was a range of photographs I saw when wandering about last Saturday.

The Custard Factory is also worth discovering to see what they have going on, at the moment it includes a giant mural I believe.

Whilst much of this is free, encouraging you to give the donation you can afford and so allowing all to enjoy there are some things going on which make a charge.

The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery currently has Enchanted Dreams: The Pre-Raphaelite Art of E.R. Hughes. This beautiful exhibition which has a range of late Victorian and Edwardian art is on until the 21^st February 2016. The entry charge for this is £7 for adults (full price and free for children), but if you are going to visit the gallery regularly you can get membership for £25. This gets you into everything for the year, and £42 for a joint membership. You also get 10% off in the Edwardian Tea Room within this as well as entry to a range of other galleries owned by Birmingham Council including the Museum of theJewellery Quarter which has a £6 adult entry.

This means that you can find the money to pay out for the pass you are going to get a number of good days out from it.

Music and Laughter

There is so much going on in the city from big venues to small pubs that there is something for everybody, whatever the budget.

If you are on a budget look out for open mic nights, which there are now web sites specifically advertising. The Crescent Theatre has a range of affordable shows on offer and on November 2^nd they have a free night offering a range of music. You are advised to book in advance for this one.

The Glee Club in Birmingham has a range of music and comedy acts for a range of budgets. On November 1^st they have a Rough Works showcase of local comics which is £4 entry.

If you are into classical music then it is possible to see some really high class stuff on a regular basis if you can get to the Friday lunchtime concerts at the Barber Institute.

The Birmingham Conservatoire also has a range of affordable high quality jazz and classical events including Monday lunchtime show cases.

Festivals

I am learning to keep my eyes open for festivals in Birmingham. Some like the Birmingham Weekender are free whilst others like theBirmingham Literature Festival involve a cost.

Now, this is where you have to make a judgement call about what you can afford and what you are likely to want to attend. I invested the £60+ in a ticket for the literature festival because there was lots I wanted to see and I knew with my limited budget I could just about manage this outlay and for it I could see far more of the festival than I would have been otherwise done. I know not everybody has this option, but if you can it is one worth considering.

The upcoming festival in November I am looking forward to is Shout: The festival of queer arts and culture which goes on from 12^th – 22^nd November. Some events are free whilst others have a cost involved.

Amongst the free events is an afternoon at the mac on 14^th November between noon and 5pm. There will be music, film and more going on. The thing about these festivals is they have a range of stuff going on and you pick what meets your budget.

Other Stuff

Birmingham Cathedral has been celebrating its 300^th anniversary this year. As part of this they have been putting on a range of lectures. We attended one on Saturday where Dr. Kate Isles was talking on Women in Birmingham during the 18^th century. These lectures cost £4 but are of a really high standard. Again the Cathedral also has odds and ends of free stuff if you want to keep your eye open.

If you are a film buff on a tightish (but not really low) budget I really recommend the Cineworld Unlimited Card to you. For £16.90 you get the chance to go and see any standard 2D film and get 10% off food and drink. After the first year you are upgraded to Premier membership and get a higher discount off food and drink. This means if you go for the £1.50 flavour of the month of the ice-cream (which you still get a discount on) things become a lot more affordable, especially if you take your own drinks, etc.

Then there are public spaces like the Library of Birmingham you can go and enjoy, as well as borrowing books in. These provide spaces you can sit and chill in which get you out of home. There are also loads of parks and public spaces to enjoy in Brum.

Travel wise work out what your travel will be per week to sort out the cheapest forms of travel for you. For me, because of my job, it is a zone 1 and 2 West Midland travel card. This enables me to get in and out of town from where we are but it also enables me to pay £1 for my husband to get in and out of town with me because we have a travel card.

A final idea is join a reading group and if there is not one nearby start one. I have been one as part of the last few churches I have been part of and have started one up for my neighbours in the vicar factory. If you choose books which have been out a while and which libraries will have too you can make these affordable.

 

 

 

There are loads of other things which people could tell me about and I hope they do. These are just a flavour of the things I've found out about whilst I've been here through keeping my eyes and ears open. I've really found out how the internet is your friend when you move to a new town.

As you can tell I am enjoying myself in Brum. My advice on how to survive becoming a “(trainee) clergy spouse” is to go and enjoy yourself. A new location is the gate way to a new adventure and getting out by yourself doesn’t mean being by yourself. 

BLF 5 - Final Review - Ahlberg, Coles & Maconie

Saturday saw the end of the Birmingham Literature Festival2015, with the final event being Stuart Maconie in the Studio Theatre talking about The Pie at Night.

Maconie, author and BBC Six Music presenter, gave a short stand up performance based on his book before moving into the q&a section. What I really liked about the evening and about Maconie’s style is the way he essentially takes ethnography and the anthropological approach and turns it into something fun rather than academic. He is an intelligent interpreter of the wold around him with a wonderful sense of what is funny and what is not. In The Pie at Night he has been using this to look at leisure.

The observation in his work is brilliant and he understands it because he is essentially an insider. Like many great artists he is truly declass having crossed the barrier between classes and deciding on one hand it is nonsense but on another it should not be forgotten because he knows what life is like for those who suffer as a result of it. This is why he is so clear on the danger of a London centric approach to culture dominating.

The sponsor to this event was Walter Smith a Birmingham based butchers. They gave away pork pies at the end of the event which tasted wonderful.

The audience was large for this event as it was for the Richard Coles event earlier in the evening. Now I have to admit the queue for the Coles event caught me by surprise. I did not realise the guy was so popular, having not listened to his Radio Four show and having only really come across him as one of the “celebrity gay Christians”. That I realise says much about the world I inhabit.

The Coles event was introduced by the Very Reverend Catherine Ogle, dean of Birmingham Cathedral. This made the dynamic quite interesting because as we heard early in the evening Catherine had been a priest Richard had been on placement with when training for the priesthood. I think it was good because it firstly made the event more relaxed because it really was two friends chatting and secondly I think that it meant that Coles may have camped it up less because of who he had interviewing him.

As somebody currently living as in a theological college, as spouse of a trainee, I found what he was saying about his time at theological college particularly interesting.  The idea that part of the process is intended to get you to find your own limits so you can get out of the way and let Jesus work in your context was really interesting.

The book which was being discussed and promoted in this event was Fathomless Riches: or how I went from Pop to Pulpit. When I’ve heard it referred to by others the sexual elements have been focused upon somewhat. They weren’t in this presentation. What was discussed in a moving yet not emotionalist way were his experiences of mental health difficulties and of living through the 80’s when AIDS appeared. He made an important point that many gay men who lived through that time have repressed a lot of grief which needs to be dealt with. His own experience of writing the book was such that it was not cathartic but rather opened up issues which he needed to deal with.

There were also discussions within the Coles set about the role of Christians in broadcasting and the way in which he refuses to separate his religious self from his broadcaster self whilst not inappropriately using a secular space to push Christianity and so on. He views his role in that context as missional and about taking Christ into the world.

Overall I think this was the event I was most surprised at and pleased by. It was a wonderful example of how faith and life more generally can be discussed in a normal way and how secular and sacred can mix in a way which does not have to be a parody of itself.

The other event I went to at the BLF which I have not covered on this blog yet was author Alan Ahlberg, author of over 150 books, mainly children. His event was also incredibly popular and fun. It was also slightly poignant because it showed how age can catch up with us in ways we don’t expect. The readings from his work he did were excellent and it was a privilege to hear him talk although I do wonder if a more intimate venue may have been more comfortable for him.

So overall what did I make of the BLF? Well, I thought it was an amazing event which I was overjoyed at having been able to attend so much of through my purchase of a festival pass.

My main criticisms or suggestions for improvements may have been (i) to perhaps have small events going on in the foyer between evening events when people were just hanging about for ¾ hour, (ii) have a paper information pack for pass holders with events, etc for them detailed which they would be given with their festival pass, (iii) brief ushers to signpost pass holders to get pass if they were just using normal tickets, (iv) try to get venue doors open a little earlier and (v) to perhaps have more evening events for want to be writers rather than just daytime workshops.

However, as I say it was a really great programme of events. I loved it and am thankful for everybody who worked and/or volunteered on this event in whatever capacity. 

BLF 4 - Stella Duffy Reviewed

On Wednesday night twenty three people, very predominantly women gathered in a suite of The Rep Theatre to hear a great writer, director and activist speak. She was Stella Duffy, not to be confused with Carol-Anne Duffy the poet.

Why it was such a small number, I don’t know. I suspect that with a variety of other Birmingham Literature Festival events on offer people opted for one of the other events on offer. That was a shame they missed a really useful session.

The evening sponsored by the RLF, a worthy organisation I think from the event introduction, was billed as a lecture but was more akin to a seminar.

To gain a response from the audience and to introduce us to one of the things she wanted to talk about she introduced us to the five principles of open space. One of the effects of this was that any embarrassment amongst us about the small number of people present was removed.

This technique which also aligns with her Buddhist believes also serves to inspire and empower the audience by making believe them that their being there is not an accident.

As with the other times I had heard Duffy speak at Greenbelt she taught as she spoke and shared something of her own background. It was explicitly made clear last night that part of her role is to show that people from working class people can engage with the arts and to show there are people like them in there working.

Some reoccurring themes came out throughout the talk such as the need to be generous. This is a woman who is tremendously generous giving her time for things she believes in whilst working very, very hard.

It became clear through the talk though that one can only succeed with such generosity if you allocate time to tasks and are willing to collaborate. This came through most clearly when she was talking about the Fun Palaces, which seek to provide temporary places where arts and sciences come together the local community.

She is a woman who has large following on social media and during her talk recommended a range of Apps which can help you with time management.

Time was clearly something important to her that she believed should not be wasted and also was something which should not be used as an excuse.

Listening to talk she discussed spirituality and religious heritage in a way which made me smile. She was brutally honest whilst being affectionate about so much that she spoke of. This reality laced optimism was something which shone through when she spoke of her own experience which has included serious cancer and reconstructive surgery as a result. She described the relationship between the darker sides of life and what she has done to help others, sometimes as a result, as the relationship between destiny and mission.

As one of the founders of the Women’s Equality Party she talked about the hard work behind the scenes which has underpinned this movement.

She also, as a thread through the hour long event, kept returning to giving tips to writers. She detailed the classic western story structure and talked of the need not to plan slavishly according to this but to bear it in mind when drafting and redrafting your work.

I found this whole session really inspiring. From hearing her speak and reading her work previously I had admired her, last night I learnt so much from her that I was even more grateful.

I need to make clear that I think hero worship is unhelpful, but role models are not. I am under no illusion this woman is as human as the rest of us and will have her faults yet she also has an incredible gift of inspiring you to move forward with your dreams. That is what she generously does and continued to do last night.

BLF 3 - Reflection on Romany Story & Song and Somewhere in Between

So Tuesday saw me pop back down to the Studio Theatre in the Library of Birmingham for another night of lit, making use of the Literature Festival Pass I had purchased. On this occasion it was music and words - firstly from Sam Lee and Richard O’Neill with Romany Song and Story and then from Lauren Kinsella with Somewhere in Between. I came home with a head buzzing with thoughts, trying to make sense of the evening where I had very much felt both the insider and the outsider. As a result this piece is longer than a review would be and is much more of a reflection. Some of it will be descriptive of the event too because I want to distil the key things I heard.

To put my reactions to the Lee and O’Neill event in context I am not Romany but I am the child of a story teller. Over the years I have spent time at various festivals both as a child and adult listening to others chat and tell stories around campfires and tables; over morning coffee and late night whiskey and wine. Therefore this event which was chaired by Pete Lawrence who is co-founder of The Big Chill festival was one I was naturally attracted to.

Looking round it was noticeable the audience was smaller than on previous evenings and that there was a slightly different mix to it. It was more exclusively white and less clearly middle class whilst not being visibly working class. I suspect this may be in part because the evening’s events at the Library clashed with Cooked Up at the Ikon Gallery where a new short story collection was being discussed.

There was a palpably different tone to the evening. This event was not sponsored in the same way. When introducing and outlining the way the evening would work the chair didn’t seek to give their own mini-lecture rather he simply explained and then settled into the background. There was also not the shadow of the academy hanging over this event as there had been previous ones I’d been to. That is not to criticise the academic and intellectual nature of the other events, which I have really enjoyed, but it is to say this one was different. There was not that feeling of the academy and arts establishment seeking to maintain dominance either through coming in as “the experts” or using the event to seek to incorporate the activists.

During the event we were told something of the lives of Sam and Richard. Richard who is 53 talked about the changes he had witnessed within Romany life as a result of wider changes in society. As he spoke it made me think about things I had not thought about before including the impact of the 60’s building programmes on traditional ways of life.

Richard talked about the way in which stories were passed down whilst his family were making things. He also talked about the power of storytelling to bring people together. Within this section he referred to “Squegs” his word for all of those who feel like square pegs and who don’t quite fit in and how stories can help them. He then went on to tell a family story about how his great uncle had faced prejudice but not responded with the same kind of response and the impact of that. Within this he was showing how stories help pass down basic principles which do not change from age to age.

Sam then spoke about his own growing up life as a song collector and folk singer. He had grown up to a Jewish family in London and had his own story of separation as a result. He came from an green perspective talking about the relationship between story and song and the natural world.

Within his discussion of the folk collecting he said he was attracted not by the folk revival but rather by hearing the recordings of the original songs and he wanted to talk to those who had recorded them to find their stories. As part of this he has set up the Song Collectors Collective. His aim, he said, was to help a silenced community have the opportunity to be heard.

Richard then went on to paraphrase Bruce Springsteen when he said we live in a world where there are 200 channels but nothing on and stories are still relevant because they have something to speak into a society where this is real struggle for survival going on.

Pete moved the discussion on by talking about the Kerrville Festival in Texas and the power of the campfire. This led on to a really interesting discussion of the campfire and self-made entertainment. As they reflected on this I thought of the scene before me and the role of discussion as performance. It can sometimes be a competition and at other times it can be a clearly be a discussion of mutual respect. This was very much the latter and respect was extended to the audience as well. We were not considered the other in this setting.

The discussion then moved on to the passing down of tradition, which it was argued everybody has a duty to do. Richard then spoke about the way older people declutter and how in the travelling community generally people only travel with what they need. The most valuable thing in the world is your memories and they are what travel with you everywhere. They help you connect with people.

Respect for elders and for their stories was central to this event and what was being said. This related to the handing down too. The evening ended with Sam, who regards himself as an interpreter, singing The Moon Shone on My Bed Last Night which had been passed on to him. His performance of this song which he just leaned forward and sung was beautiful, haunting and wonderful.

This event hit me somewhere deep inside emotionally which art occasionally can. It also made me reflect anew on what it means to be a Methodist Local Preacher and part of a church community made up primarily of our elders. Is part of our role to gather their stories and pass them on as well as continuing to pass down the stories of the bible? It also made me reflect on my role within a faith community when Richard said, quoting somebody I didn’t catch, “tradition is tending the flame not worshipping the ashes”.

Then it was over and I was left with my enjoyment of the event. Seeing one of the people running the BLF I went over to enquire about something which had been bothering me since the night before when my ticket had been queried by somebody on the door – should I have some kind of lanyard type pass rather than my dog-eared ticket which was getting more worn by the day? The answer was yes and I discovered it was waiting for me at the box office. I realised that what I had taken to be an email advertising the festival, and so deleted without reading before the start was actually something which had been vital information. Due to deleting an email and emptying the trash so it was not retrievable I was not getting the full experience of the festival, which as a pass holder I was able to. For example I have no knowledge of extra events for pass holders which I guess related to that email.

Again this made me reflect. How much these days depends upon expecting and trusting emails? Do we dismiss too much by looking at the subject line of emails we don’t expect and making assumptions as to their use or otherwise?

Then we got to the second event Somewhere in Between with singer and composer Lauren Kinsella. First off I want to say that the quality of this was absolutely top class and the musicianship and acting was wonderful. However, art is a matter of taste and subjectivity. There is also a certain level of being able to fit in with the norms of the audience.

The evening began with a poem read by Peter Campion who had a wonderful Irish lilt and a suitably nonchalant manner in the telling of An Accommodation by Simon Armitage.

Then began the music. Now I have to say I like the more commercial end of jazz rather than the avant-garde. The first set of music was at the intersection between jazz, hippy and prog rock. This is probably as far away from my personal taste as you can get without veering into classical which I really struggle with. There were also unintelligible noises being made whilst clouds went across the back of the screen making it incredibly hippy trippy.

Now as I say the musicianship was wonderful and of the highest standard but Kinsella’s singing reminded me of the stranger bits of Bagpuss, a programme which had freaked me a bit as a child. I could imagine her as Emily.

The seriousness of the audience during a really funny poem was something I struggled with too. I wanted to laugh at this poem because it was clearly intended to be enjoyed and giggled at, but I couldn’t because I was in a very serious audience where it was clear this was not the done thing. On the basis of the above I decided to leave in the interval not because I felt as alien in this performance as I had felt at home in the first of the evening.

BLF 2 - Brecht and Steffin / The Writing of Protest Review

Monday’s first Birmingham Literature Festival adventure was Brecht and Steffin: Love in a Tim of Exile and War introduced by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn. This was followed by The Writing of Protest an event where Everyday Sexism, 38 Degrees and Professor Mary Evans came together to discuss narrative and protest. Both were at the Library of Birmingham.

The Brecht event was an incredible performance. There were readings of the poems, letters and prose by Steffin played by Anna Procter and Brecht who was portrayed by Mathew Wernham. Some of these were accompanied by pianist Dominic Muldowney. Constantine and Kuhn discussed the relationship between the two. This was played out on a stage which had photos of the two projected behind them.

What was so striking about this performance was the eye contact of the two players which often communicated what words could not. Additionally, the complexity of this piece required an ability to take more complex cues than many performances. This all occurred seamlessly and the whole performance was mesmerising as well as incredibly informative.

I was not familiar with the work of Brecht or Steffin who collaborated with him on much of his work, prior to her premature death, during the ten year period since she first became his mistress. The performance has made me want to explore his writing more.

The audience for this event was small, conspicuously middle class and middle aged and above. This was in contrast to the Writing of Protest event, sponsored by Wolverhampton University, which was much fuller and had a far more mixed audience, including many young people.

We were told in the introduction to the event, chaired by playwright David Edgar, it built upon something Owen Jones said at last year’s event. I was concerned at the beginning when Edgar, the only male on the stage gave an introduction full of quotes by men. However, I should not have worried. He was not there to challenge and he made an excellent chair for the evening.

The first speaker on the panel was Professor Mary Evans from the LSE. She started writing in protest against the idea that experiences are just to be understood in terms of men and masculinity. She said that political narratives were now one of her interests.

She challenged the audience to think about the current narratives in three ways. Firstly, the Prime Minister recently said, “British people are decent, sensible and reasonable”. She asked what it means not to be some of those things and argued that it sets up a binary against those who protest and who may be portrayed as not sensible and unreasonable. She made the point words are used to set boundaries about political spaces and can give rise to powerlessness. She made the important point that British history is full of examples of people who have made progress in society by not being reasonable or sensible.

She then went on to talk about the two aspects of power: the setting of an agenda and the control of knowledge before finally moving on to discuss sensationalism. She continued by arguing that to challenge neo-liberalism and the neo-liberal consensus and offer an alternative we need to think about power and sensationalism.

What struck me about Evans and the Brecht and Steffin event was they could have been incredibly academic but they weren’t. What she said, like the first event of the evening, was incredibly accessible.

Laura Townshead of 38 Degrees explained the power ordinary people have and the way we need to see these people as heroes more often. You don’t have to be militant to take action was a key point made. Throughout her talk she made the point power lies with us not those we might think has it. She talked through different types of stories and the way each type could be used.

Whilst knowing a fair amount of the organisation I was surprised and impressed to find how it has grown beyond its online work. I had not realised how some of the money raised went towards supporting court cases such as one who took Sports Direct to court regarding its use of zero hours contracts.

She underlined how important it is not to give an abstract view and argued this is one of the problems the intellectual left has had.

The final speaker was Laura Bates who started and spearheads the Everyday Sexism Project. I was amazed at her ability to give a range of complex information including both statistics and stories without notes. She talked about the way in which sharing stories gave people power and how narratives change as a result.

The nuanced nature of qualitative data enabling one to make links to others and to highlight the importance of intersectionality was made clear by what was said.

During their discussions there was interesting discussion of the relationship between on line and off line activism and of the double edged nature of social media. Laura Bates has been subject to an ongoing stream of abuse and serious threats, as I know many online feminist activists have been.

This event had vitality and energy. It was a literary event but it was more than that. It was a gathering of activists and potential activists. The evening gave advice and most importantly it gave hope. This was a key thing because as the speakers said fear is a key reason for so much which we might want to stand against and we need to be able to give an alternative narrative of hope. 

BLF Review 1 - Man Booker Short List Event

Thursday night saw the beginning of the Birmingham LiteratureFestival, an event put on by Writing West Midlands, and it was kicked off by The Man Booker Prize Short List Event at the Studio Theatre which is part of the main library in Birmingham.

The event was sponsored by the creative writing department of Birmingham City University and as part of the introduction to the event we were treated to what is best described as a micro lecture on the history of the novel from Prof David Roberts who is the Dean of faculty. There were also free anthologies of writing published by the department available at the end of the event.

This was not just an event for academics and pseudo academics the BLF is intended for the whole community and there were all ages represented in the audience for this event. 

The two of the short listed writers represented at the event, Sunjeev Sahota and Tom McCarthy. The award they are competing for, which has the winner announced next week, is for a prize which aimed to encourage leadership.

The chair for the evening was Dr Greg Leadbetter, one of the lecturers on the creative writing course. He moved between language styles which meant at times it felt as if one was constantly moving between a discussion in a seminar and another in a pub.

Tom McCarthy read from his book Satin Island. He explained that the narrator is a corporate anthropologist and it is written in the form of numbered paragraphs. The excerpt he read was about buffering which was a key theme of the book. Unfortunately it just got my brain thinking of the EE advert featuring Kevin Bacon which talked about the buffer face.

I found myself not adverse to the idea of reading this book which is essentially rooted in that space where philosophy, history, sociology and cultural studies meet. According to the author it is a novel of ideas and that has shaped its evolution. He wanted to move away from distance and romanticism and talked of the complex relationship between fiction and reality which is why he has placed an ethical problem at the centre of the novel.

As I listened I wondered on one level if he was taking the mickey out of academia. His style seemed similar to Douglas Coupland in some ways but without the wry smile being apparent. As the evening wore on things got clearer to me. This was a clever bloke who was clearly really academic and had examined a range of philosophical, historical and cultural texts and just knew stuff and spoke in the form which the academy generally demands. He did not seek to patronise the audience by suggesting they would not or could not understand what he was on about and was particularly interesting in answering in a toned down by not dumbed down way to the questions coming from school kids in the q&a.

Then we moved on to Sunjeev Sahota who is an Asian from Derbyshire and was slightly younger than both the chair and McCarthy. He was reading from and discussing his book The Year of the Runaways which is set in 2003 and contains the stories of four protagonists being interwoven.

During the discussion it was great when the chair in a very academic way said the book read “like a social expose” and asked “did the writer see it like that?”

Sahota replied “no” and went on to explain it had just sprung from his personal life. This guy who was a writer, writing about what he knew and working damn hard to refine his craft (at one point binning 60,000 words) was clearly not part of the academy. Yet, he was clearly not stupid and was well read. What I absolutely loved about this author was he is somebody who is a writer but he wasn’t up for a fake pseudo-intellectualism. As a result in some of his answers he was able to make the audience giggle and connect with us in a way in which I don’t think McCarthy could.

Both writers gained our respect and certainly from me an interest in their work. I warmed to Sahota because he was more ordinary, whilst clearly through his talent as a writer being extraordinary.

One really interesting quote about what his book was about was when he said he was telling in its story of immigrants and that is “what it is like to live in the gaps in the global system.”

The q&a at this type of even is fun because you really do have no idea what you are going to be asked. The questions varied between the mundane, the bizarre and the really clever. I did like the older Scottish lady who had read the McCarthy book and said it was thoroughly depressing. She asked if that was how he thought the world was going.

My personal favourite question which somebody asked was “What makes your book different to what’s out there already” which one could easily paraphrase to why should I read either of these? That one appeared to put the writers on the spot. McCarthy talked about his being a radical way to the roots and what he was trying to do was configure what was already there. In answer to this question which came from one of the youngsters who were there on a school trip he said “modernism is grave digging”.

Whilst I don’t think this event will probably be my favourite of the festival which continues until the 17^th (and for which season passes are available to make it a little cheaper) I did enjoy it and would like to read the books.